Toward soviet America

OWAR&

WILLIAM Z* FOSTER

From the collection of the

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o Prelinger
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San Francisco, California
2006

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

TO ESTHER

TOWARD

SOVIET

AMERICA

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William Z. Foster

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FEINTED FOR

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All Rights Reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE

THERE is a great and growing mass demand in this
country to know just what is the Communist party
and its program. The masses of toilers, suffering
under the burdens of the crisis, are keenly discon-
tented and want to find a way out of their intoler-
able situation. They are alarmed at the depth,
length and general severity of the crisis. They be-
gin to realize that "there is something rotten in
Denmark," that there are fundamental flaws in the
capitalist system. Their growing realization of
this is further strengthened as they see the spec-
tacular rise of Socialism in the Soviet Union. The
masses are beginning rightly to sense that Commu-
nism has an important message for the human race,
and they want to know what it is.

Capitalism is deeply anxious that the masses do
not get this message. Hence, from the outset it
has carried on a campaign of falsification of the
Russian revolution entirely without parallel in his-
tory. There has been a veritable ocean of lies in the
capitalist press against the U.S.S.R. The Ameri-
can Federation of Labor leadership and the Social-
ist party, defenders of the capitalist system, have
outdone even the capitalists themselves in this

vi PREFACE

wholesale vilification. The effort of the capitalists
and their labor lieutenants has been to set off the
Communists as willful enemies and destroyers of
the human race. But the masses begin to see
through this misrepresentation and they want to
know the truth.

The present book is an attempt to meet this mass
demand by a plain statement of Communist policy,
avoiding technical complexities and theoretical
elaboration. It outlines simply the program,
strength, strategy and perspectives of the Com-
munist party of the United States. It undertakes
to point out what is the matter with capitalism and
what must be done about it. It indicates where
America is heading and it makes a practical appli-
cation of the lessons of the Russian revolution to
the situation in this country. Its central purpose
is to explain to the oppressed and exploited masses
of workers and poor farmers how, under the leader-
ship of the Communist party, they can best protect
themselves now, and in due season cut their way
out of the capitalist jungle to Socialism.

WM. Z. FOSTER

New York City
May 1, 1932

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 1

The Present Economic Crisis, p. 3; The Mass
Impoverishment of the Toilers, p. 7; Capitalist
Fear and Confusion, p. 15; Cyclical Crises, p.
20; The General Crisis of Capitalism, p. 25;
The Decaying Capitalist System, p. 33; The
War Danger, p. 40; The World-Wide Revolu-
tionary Upsurge, p. 53 ; The Revolutionary Per-
spective, p. 63.

II. THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 71

Flourishing Bolshevik Industries, p. 75; The
Revolution in Agriculture, p. 88; Outstripping
the Capitalist Countries, p. 92 ; Real Prosperity
for the Toilers, p. 97; The Cultural Revolution,
p. 108; Accomplishing the Impossible, p. 115;
Socialism and Communism, p. 128; The Dicta-
torship of the Proletariat, p. 133; The Commu-
nist Party of the Soviet Union, p. 140.

III. CAPITALIST ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE THE

CRISIS 146

(a) Quack Capitalist Economic Remedies, p.
146; The Rationalization of Industry, p. 147;
The American "New Capitalism," p. 149;
Trusts and Cartels, p. 155; The Movement for
Capitalist Planned Economy, p. 161 ; The Ques-
tion of an Organized Capitalism, p. 169; (b)
Futile Efforts to Quench the Class Struggle, p.
172; From Social Reformism to Social Fascism,
p. 174; The Fasciszation of the American Fed-
eration of Labor, p. 177; The Fasciszation of the
vii

viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Socialist Party, p. 185; The "Left" Social Fas-
cists, p. 193; The Bankruptcy of Social Fascism,
p. 200; The Futility of Fascism, p. 204.

TV. THE REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF THE

CRISIS 211

The Conquest of Political Power, p. 212; The
Revolutionary Forces in the United States, p.
220; The Communist Party; the Party of the
Toilers, p. 234; The Present-Day Tasks of the
American Revolutionary Movement, p. 241 ; The
Communist Party Program of Immediate De-
mands, p. 247 ; A Program of Class Struggle, p.
252; The American Workers and the Revolu-
tion, p. 260.

V. THE UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA £68

The American Soviet Government, p. 271 ; The
Expropriation of the Expropriators, p. 277; The
Improvement of the Toilers' Conditions, p. 280;
The Liquidation of Capitalist Robbery and
Waste, p. 283; The Reorganization of Industry,
p. 288; The Collectivization of Agriculture, p.
296; The Liberation of the Negro, p. 300; The
Emancipation of Woman, p. 306; Unshackling
the Youth, p. 309; The Cultural Revolution in
the United States, p. 313; Curing Crime and
Criminals, p. 319; The Abolition of War, p. 324;
Socialist Incentive, p. 328; Collectivism and In-
dividualism, p. 332; Building a New World,
p. 338.

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

CHAPTER I

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM

THE MOST striking and significant political and
social fact in the world today is the glaring contrast
between the industrial, political and social condi-
tions prevailing in the capitalist countries and
those obtaining in the Soviet Union. Throughout
the capitalist world, without exception, the picture
is one of increasing chaos and crisis. The capital-
ist industrial system is paralysed as never before.
Tremendous masses of workers are thrown into un-
employment and destitution. The standards of
living of the producing masses have declined catas-
trophically, mass starvation existing in every capi-
talist country, including the United States. War
is already here in Manchuria and preparations go
ahead upon an unprecedented scale for future wars
against the Soviet Union and among the capitalist
powers themselves. To enforce their regime of
hunger and intensified exploitation, the capitalists
everywhere are increasingly developing their dic-
tatorship from its masked form of bourgeois de-
mocracy into open systems of Fascist terrorism.
And against all this the revolutionary upsurge of

2 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

the workers and poor farmers becomes worldwide;
revolutionary struggle growing acute in many
countries. Capitalism is manifestly in serious
crisis.

On the other hand, the Soviet Union, born in the
midst of the capitalist world slaughter of 1914-18,
presents a picture of growth and general social
advance. The Russian industries and agriculture
are expanding at an unheard-of rate, the Soviet
Union being the only country in the world not pros-
trated by the economic crisis. The masses of pro-
ducers of factory and farm are all employed; their
standards of living and culture are rapidly rising.
They are building a new and free proletarian de-
mocracy. In short, as capitalism goes deeper and
deeper into crisis, the Soviet Union forges ahead
faster and faster upon every front.

The meaning of all this, as will be developed in
the course of this book, is that the capitalist system
is in decline and is historically being replaced by a
new social order, Socialism. Capitalism, based
upon the private ownership of industry and land
and the exploitation of the toiling masses, has ex-
hausted its social role; the revolutionary forces,
under the leadership of the Communist Interna-
tional, are gathering to sweep it away and to build
in its place a social system based upon the com-
mon ownership of the means of production and the
carrying on of production for social use. Out of
the welter of crisis and mass misery and war, a new

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 3

social system is born. We are living in the histori-
cal period of the revolutionary transition from
capitalism to Socialism.

The Present Economic Crisis

LIKE a tornado the present economic crisis struck
the capitalist world. It is a crisis of over-produc-
tion. The first signs of this threatening over-pro-
duction manifested themselves in Germany and
central Europe generally in the latter part of 1928.
The industrial decline began in the U. S. towards
the middle of 1929, followed by the great October
Wall Street crash, after which every capitalist
country was swiftly drawn into the vortex. The
inevitable result is the worst economic crisis, by far,
in the whole history of capitalism. It is the deep-
est, the most far-reaching and the longest. Every
branch of industry, every capitalist country is
affected. Only the Soviet Union is immune. And
as Stalin says, "The crisis has struck deepest of
all at the principal country of capitalism, its cita-
del, the U.S.A." The crisis is setting in motion
forces that threaten the very existence of the capi-
talist system.

Statistics constantly pile up to indicate the en-
tirely unparalleled severity of the economic crisis.
In industry the drop in production has been catas-
trophic and, after 30 months of crisis, it still de-
clines. Production in the basic industries has

4 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

fallen more than 50% below 1929 levels and more
than 30% below 1930. Steel has dipped to 20%
of capacity and "even order inquiries for tacks are
seized hopefully." Building is off about 70% since
1928, notwithstanding "emergency" building pro-
grams, etc. In 1931 American exports declined
about one-third, or $1,418,000,000. The total na-
tional income fell from 89.5 billions in 1929 to 52.4
billions in 1931, or 41%. The drop in wholesale
prices, 24% between 1929 and 1931, is wholly un-
precedented, the previous record being 7% in the
crisis of 1873-75. New financing decreased from
6l/2 billions in 1929 to 2% billions in 1931. The
general business index, at this writing registering
60, a drop from 113 in Aug., 1929, is the lowest in
American economic history, the nearest low to this
being 72 in 1894.

Internationally there is a similar picture, world
production levels at this time being about those of
1913. According to League of Nations' figures,
world trade has fallen off 40% from the Spring of
1929 until the end of 1931, a decline entirely with-
out precedent.1 In England production is at 65,
or far below pre-war levels. In Germany, says the
German Institute for Business Research, "Indus-
trial production is about as large as it was in
the years 1900-03." Production in France has
dropped 20% since the middle of 1930. Poland
and Austria have declined 28% and 31% respec-

i The Phases and Course of the World Depression.

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 5

tively since 1929. The Balkans are deep in crisis,
Japan's industries have been similarly paralysed.

Unemployment has developed internationally
upon an unheard-of scale. In Great Britain there
are 3,000,000 unemployed, in Germany 6,500,000,
in France unemployment registers an all-time rec-
ord, and in the United States over 12,000,000 are
unemployed. There are almost as many more
part-time workers. Throughout the capitalist
countries there are not less than 40,000,000 unem-
ployed and the number constantly increases.

In agriculture the crisis is no less ravaging and
general. According to the Department of Agri-
culture bulletin of Dec. 16, 1931, the value of farm
products declined from $8,765,820,000 in 1929
(which was already about 50% below 1919) to
$4,122,850,000 in 1931, as against a decline of only
10% in prices of commodities that farmers must
buy. The terrific fall in the prices of agricultural
products is graphically illustrated by the fact that
on Oct. 4, 1931 wheat reached 44^ cents a bushel
on the market, the lowest point since the Civil War,
with farmers getting as low as 25 cents. And
world agriculture in the capitalist countries is in a
similar crisis, prices received by the peasants hav-
ing fallen from 40% to 70% for the great staples,
wheat, cotton, rice, rubber, silk, coffee, etc.

In finance the world economic crisis also mani-
fests itself with devastating effects. Whichever
way one looks there is a spreading ruin and wreck-

6 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

age. The whole financial system of capitalism is
tottering. Internationally, there is a great wave
of bankruptcy, many of Europe's oldest and
greatest banks and industrial concerns collapsing.
Great Britain, Japan and various other countries
have been driven off the gold standard. Stock
exchange prices in many countries have dropped
50% to 75%, the general average in France de-
clining from 437 in 1930 to 230 at the end of 1931.
Huge deficits exist in all the national government
budgets. Repudiation of international debts is the
order of the day, with the United States standing
to lose, counting war debts and other loans now in
default, from 10 to 15 billion dollars.

The United States, home of the world's strongest
capitalism, presents a similar picture of financial
crisis. During 1931, 2,290 banks with deposits of
$1,759,000,000 closed their doors, and 17,000 retail
stores failed. In 1931, bank deposits declined by
seven billion dollars. From the middle of 1929 to
the end of March, 1932, the average prices of 30
leading industrial stocks on the New York Stock
Exchange dropped from $381.17 to $61.98.2 The
total loss in security "values," according to B. C.
Forbes, was 75 billions. New York, Chicago,
Philadelphia, Detroit and hundreds of smaller
cities are bankrupt. The Federal government
faces a deficit of about two and one-half billion dol-
lars. And, most significant of all, the Federal

2 New York American, April 12, 1932.

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 7

Reserve Bank system, a financial fortress of sup-
posed Gibraltar strength, has manifestly proved
unable to stand the strain, the Hoover two billion
dollar Reconstruction Finance Corporation being
an attempt to buttress up the reserve bank system
by a further concentration of the State power be-
hind the great bankers and by a policy of inflation.
Mazur says: "1931 has witnessed a substantial
debacle of both the orthodox currency basis and
the established banking system of the world." 3
And the end is not yet, with the crisis deepening
internationally.

The Mass Impoverishment of the Toilers

"We in America today are nearer to the final triumph
over poverty than ever before in the history of any land."
President Hoover, Aug. 11, 1928.

THROUGHOUT capitalism the policy of the ruling
class is to try to find a way out of the crisis by
throwing its burden upon the shoulders of the
working class, the poor farmers and the lower sec-
tions of the city petty bourgeoisie. This is being
done by a vast system of starving the unemployed,
wage-cuts, speed-up, inflation schemes, taxes di-
rected against the masses, etc. In consequence,
with the development of the crisis, there has been
an enormous increase in the impoverishment of the
toiling masses.

s Current History, November, 1931.

8 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

Wholesale starvation, spreading like a plague, is
the order of the day in all capitalist countries.
The bourgeoisie, intent only upon its own pleas-
ures, cynically shrugs its shoulders at the whole
terrible misery, when it does not hypocritically di-
rect the masses towards religion for consolation.
Nor are there "scientists" lacking to justify this
mass starvation. Thus Prof. E. G. Conklin of
Princeton University says: "Some of the weaker,
according to the law of nature, will naturally die
under the stress of the times. Others will not
propagate their kind. The strong and hardy will
survive and reproduce, and thus the human race
will be strengthened." 4

Since the onset of the present economic crisis
American workers and poor farmers, through un-
employment, part-time work, wage-cuts, reduced
prices for agricultural products, tax increases, etc.,
have suffered a general decline in their living stand-
ards of at least 50%. Prof. Leiserson estimates
that the total income of industrial and office work-
ers was about 22 billion dollars less in 1931 than
in 1929, and this is supported by the figures of
Business Week (Feb. 10). This is by no means
offset by the decline in living costs which, accord-
ing to the U. S. Dept. of Labor, amounted to
11.7% from June, 1929, until June, 1931. On the
farms, the Alexander Hamilton Institute says, the
average income per household has dropped from

4 New York Times, Jan. 28, 1932.

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 9

$887 in 1929 (already a crisis year in agriculture)
to but $367 in 1931.

By these gigantic reductions in their real income
masses of toilers of field and factory have been
forced down to actual starvation conditions. Even
before the crisis the working masses stood at the
very threshold of destitution. The average wage
of industrial workers during the height of "pros-
perity" did not exceed $23.00 per week. Conse-
quently, the vast body of American toilers existed
from hand to mouth. They had very little re-
serves. Paul Nystrom says that 9,000,000 people
in the United States lived below the subsistence
level.5 Then came the economic hurricane.

The result is real destitution, verging into actual
starvation, on a broad scale in the United States,
"Only in countries like India and China are there
today larger numbers of workers suffering from
mass unemployment, hunger, semi-starvation, dis-
ease and other manifold evils of wholesale poverty
than in the United States — the richest country in
the world," says the Statement of the National
Hunger Marchers to Congress, Dec. 7, 1931.
"One-third to one-half of our population is at vari-
ous stages ranging from hunger to the pressing
danger of losing homes and farms," says Governor
LaFollette. The New York American, (Feb. 21,
1932) , says: "Food is lacking in 81 per cent of the
New York City homes that have been stricken by

6 Economic Principles of Consumption.

10 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

unemployment, the Emergency Unemployment
Relief Committee reported last night." William
Hodson, executive director of the Welfare Council
of New York City, informs us: "Relief in New
York City is now on what might be called a disaster
basis . . . the spectre of starvation faces millions
who never were out of work before." The Balti-
more Post, (Mar. 11, 1932), declares; "40,000 face
starvation in Baltimore." An Associated Press
dispatch of Mar. 23, 1932, from Tulsa, Okla., says:
"Ten thousand persons have been living here since
Nov. 1 on a charity ration costing six cents a day
per person."

So it is all over the country. The cities are full
of "Hoovervilles" and breadlines, where tens of
thousands of homeless, hungry workers are com-
pelled to exist in tin can shacks and to stand for
hours to get a miserable bowl of soup. Workers
fall famished in the streets in front of stores and
warehouses that are crammed with the necessaries
of life. Daily we read in the capitalist press of
families actually starving to death. No longer is
it "news" for a confused and desperate unemployed
worker to blow out his brains or to do away with
his family.

The workers are losing wholesale the houses,
radios, furniture, etc., that they so laboriously got
together during the upward swing of American
capitalism; thousands of farmers are losing their
farms to the usurers. The Nation, (Mar. 23,

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 11

1932), says that in Detroit alone 50,000 workers
lost their life savings in the collapsed banks, and
similar huge losses have been suffered all over the
country. In 1931, according to the New York
Journal, (Jan. 28), 198,738 workers' families were
evicted from their homes in New York City for
non-payment of rent. The worker's life has be-
come an endless round of worry and misery. The
jails are filled to overflowing, thousands preferring
prison rigors to life under the Hoover regime of
"rugged individualism." Prostitution spreads like
a poison weed in every American city. Tubercu-
losis runs riot among the half -starved masses, and
the hospitals are packed with sufferers of diseases
bred of under-nourishment, etc., etc. To such a
debacle has come the Hooverian pre-election prom-
ises of the "abolition of poverty," "a chicken in
every pot" and "an automobile in every garage"
for the workers. And daily the whole maze of
poverty, starvation, misery and death gets worse.
Manifestly, a fundamentally necessary measure
against actual starvation among the workers is the
establishment of a system of federal unemploy-
ment insurance, financed by the government and
the employers. This must be of a permanent char-
acter, because what we have to deal with is not a
temporary condition of unemployment, but a huge
mass unemployment on a permanent basis. This,
however, has not been done. The capitalists and
their government have forced the workers into

12 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

wholesale starvation which is now infesting the
country like a plague.

The entire question of unemployment relief has
been reduced to a charity basis. Although the
worker has spent his life producing the wealth of
the country, now when the capitalist system has
broken down he is treated as a mendicant and a
criminal. He is thrown a beggarly handout like
a starving dog. Mr. Gifford, head of Hoover's
Emergency Employment Committee, boasted that
in the 1931 Fall relief drive about $150,000,000 had
been raised in the various localities. So far as the
Federal government is concerned, this money (what
the workers get of it after the grafters are through)
has to last the unemployed for the whole year.
Thus it figures out at about $1.00 per month for
each of the 12,000,000 unemployed. In New
York, richest city in the world, after a disgusting
campaign of begging, $18,000,000 of Gifford's
fund was raised. This would give about $1.50 per
month to each of New York's 1,000,000 unem-
ployed.

The unemployed relief program of the Hoover
Government is a real hunger plan. It is the policy
of the capitalist class and it has the support of
both big parties and the A. F. of L. That the
Progressives also agree fundamentally with it is
shown by the new unemployment insurance law in
Wisconsin. This law adds insult to injury. Ac-
cording to its beggarly provisions unemployed

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 13

workers can receive only a maximum of $100
yearly. And this applies only to those now em-
ployed, for whom insurance funds will be gradu-
ally built up. As for the masses of those totally
unemployed now and part-time workers, they are
left out of consideration altogether.

If the capitalists have callously forced the toil-
ing masses into starvation conditions they have,
however, very carefully looked after their own in-
terests. "During the first nine months of 1930,
our national industrial and business system was
able to and did pay $432,000,000 more in dividends
and $191,000,000 more in interest than it did in
1929; in the first nine months of 1931, the second
year of the depression, it paid $347,000,000 more
in dividends and $338,000,000 more in interest than
it did in the first nine months of 1929." 6 The
Publishers Financial Bureau, (New York Ameri-
can, Mar. 19, 1932), states that the industrial divi-
dends paid in 1931 are "the largest for any year
previous to 1929." Anna Rochester says: "In
September, 1931, the New York Times reported
that of 5,000 companies, 50% had continued divi-
dend payments without reduction; 20% were pay-
ing smaller dividends; and only 30% had omitted
payments entirely. . . . For October, 1931, the to-
tal dividends plus bond interest by a large group
of corporations were only 4% below the high record

6 America Faces the Future, p. 370.

14 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

of October, 1930." 7 Besides, every appeal of the
bankers and other capitalists to the government for
assistance has met with immediate response. The
two billion dollar Reconstruction Finance Corpora-
tion has been organized and the Glass- Steagall
inflation bill is being prepared to absorb the worth-
less paper of the banks and to underwrite the
dividends of industrial corporations. And in the
new Federal taxes the capitalists are further
shielded from the economic effects of their own
bankruptcy.

In the other capitalist countries starvation con-
ditions also grip the masses. In Germany, with
wages down 30% since the hunger period of 1929
and millions getting no unemployment benefits,
actual famine exists in many cities. The great
masses in England are almost as badly-off. In
Poland miners got 69 cents a day and have re-
cently had another wage-cut. And the offensive
to cut wages and reduce unemployment benefits
and social insurance in general goes on ever faster
throughout Europe. In the colonial and semi-
colonial countries crisis conditions also prevail.
Famine stalks in China and India. In Brazil, says
E. Penno, Brazilian Public Health Director,
"30,000,000 people are slowly dying of starvation,
malaria and syphilis." The world over, the bank-
rupt capitalist system is physically destroying the
producing masses. The general crisis bids fair to

7 Profits and Wages, p. 8.

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 15

outdo in numbers of human victims even the mur-
derous World War itself.

All this is a picture of a society in decay. Great
mills and factories standing idle and warehouses
piled full of goods, while millions of toilers starve
and lack the necessities of life — that is plain bank-
ruptcy. Never until capitalism appeared upon the
world scene was such an anomoly possible — star-
vation in the midst of plenty. The present great
crisis is not only a glaring exhibition of the decline
of capitalism, it is a crime against the human race.

Capitalist Fear and Confusion

THE WOELD economic crisis has dealt a shattering
blow to capitalist complacency. Greatly alarmed,
the capitalists dimly perceive its seriousness, with-
out understanding its causes. Chadbourne, the
sugar expert says: "Those who speak about these
world depressions coming in cycles and this being
one of these cycles are talking sheer nonsense.
This is a depression for which there is no prece-
dent." 8 Judge Brandeis says: "The people of the
United States are now confronted with an emer-
gency more serious than war." Pope Pius XI de-
clares: "The international crisis is too general to
have been the work of men. It is evident that
the hand of God is being felt."

Over the world system of capitalism there grows

8 Speech in Brussels, May 9, 1931.

16 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

a brooding fear of revolution. The capitalists
cannot cure their deepening crisis and have been
unable to check its progress. The old tricks and
slogans for making capitalism "go" are no longer
potent. Pessimism and confusion begin to appear
in the ranks of the bourgeoisie. They start to see,
not prosperity, but the revolution, "just around the
corner." Spengler asserts: "It is no mere crisis,
but the beginning of a catastrophe.9 The chief
economist of the Stock Exchange, Dr. Irving
Fisher of Yale, in a speech cited by the United
Press on Jan. 3, of this year, issued "a warning
to capitalism 'to clean the dirt of depression' from
its foundation or be devoured by some form of
Socialism." In the recent debates in the House on
the sales tax Rep. Rainey declared that the Ameri-
can people "are right up against Communism."
Mr. Raymond Fosdick, (New York Times, Dec.
27, 1931), shrinks at the prospect of a revolution,
stating that: "Western civilization (read capital-
ism, WZF) has begun to look furtively around,
listening behind it for the silent tread of some dread
specter of destruction." W. F. Simms, Scripps-
Howard Foreign Editor, in a dispatch of Oct. 5,
1931, says:

"The object of these epochal comings and goings (the
various international conferences), it is admitted behind
the scenes, is nothing more or less than to prevent, not
merely the collapse of this or that particular country,

9 The American Mercury, January, 1932.

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 17

but of the white man's universe as a whole. For recent
events have driven Washington, London, Paris, Berlin
and Rome to the startling realization that only some sane
accord on international finances, economics and arma-
ments — and that promptly — can prevent a general
smash."

Such elements among the bourgeoisie become
especially lugubrious when they think of the Soviet
Union. They begin to sense Communism as a
higher and inevitable order of society. They more
and more realize, as their own society goes deeper
into crisis, that the U.S.S.R., forging ahead, is
having a profoundly revolutionary effect upon the
masses of starving workers and poor peasants still
under capitalism. Prof. Pollock, a bourgeois sci-
entist, at the 1931 World Congress for Social Plan-
ning, said:

"The Soviet Union has filled millions of workers and
peasants with hope and belief in a better future and of
the possibility of further progress. With us, on the con-
trary, things get worse every year. If capitalism is not
capable of arousing equal enthusiasm and readiness for
sacrifice in the masses, then there can be no doubt that
th^y will finally choose the path of the Soviets."

It is well known, of course, that the European
bourgeoisie, animated by such fears, are taking
many precautions for their personal safety. But
it is "news" that American capitalists feel the need
for similar measures. In Liberty, Jan. 2, 1932,
Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., says, speaking of the

18 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

ultra-rich: "They see the possibility of long vistas
of hungry faces in breadlines again this winter,
and they fear the red specter of revolution. . . It
is interesting to note that since the beginning of
the depression the yachts of society millionaires (in
New York Harbor) have invariably been anchored
in places where their owners could board them on
short notice."

These dark forebodings are true expressions of
the fear eating at the consciousness of the capi-
talist class. They serve to stimulate the offensive
against the workers. But, of course, the general
policy of the capitalists does not limit itself to
spreading such pessimism. On the contrary, espe-
cially in the United States, they systematically cul-
tivate optimism. As the capitalists intensify their
drive against the workers' standards of living, they
at the same time increase their propaganda about
the impending return of prosperity. The burden
of their song is that this is "just another crisis,"
that the crises of the past have been overcome and
have been followed by "prosperity," and that the
same thing must happen again. The cultivation
of such prosperity illusions is one of the principal
methods of the capitalists to break the resistance
of the workers against wage-cuts, starvation, relief
systems, etc.

This pollyanna propaganda is best illustrated in
the policy of the federal government. President
Hoover started out, at the time of the Wall Street

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 19

crash) by assuring everyone that this was only a
financial bubble, that the great "prosperity" was
safe. Then, when the industrial crisis was upon
us on all sides, he assured us, March 8, 1930, that
"the depression will be over in 60 days." And
from that time on every department in the govern-
ment has harped upon a similar string. Undoubt-
edly, the effect of sowing such illusions has been
to facilitate the wholesale cutting down of the
workers' living standards that has taken place.
The theory that the crisis will cure itself and that
all will be wTell again, is further classically illus-
trated by Prof. Taussig, who advises us: "Don't
spend too much; don't hoard; don't worry; just live
normally and everything will right itself in due
time as it has always done." 10

The capitalist optimists are wrong; the fears of
the pessimists are justified. What we have to deal
with is not "just another crisis," which will soon
liquidate itself and be followed by a higher and
worldwide wave of "prosperity." It is a profound
economic crisis developing on the basis of a rapidly
deepening general crisis of capitalism. Arising
out of fundamental weaknesses of the present so-
cial system, it is setting on foot forces that are
drastically undermining the very economic, po-
litical and social foundations of capitalism, and
hastening that system ever faster towards the prole-
tarian revolution.

10 Radio Broadcast, Jan. 23, 1932.

20 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

Cyclical Crises

IN ORDER to understand what is the matter with the
capitalist system, why it is torn with economic
crises, war and revolution and why it is sentenced
to death as a social order, it is necessary to take at
least a brief glance at the basic processes of capi-
talism. If this is done it is readily seen that the
capitalist system is a shaky house built upon sand.
It is full of incurable internal contradictions which
cause its conflicts and crises, which deepen with
the development of capitalism, which produce its
decline and decay, and which must culminate in its
revolutionary overthrow. Over 80 years ago Marx
pointed out these innate weaknesses of capitalism.

The basic contradiction of capitalism, the source
of all its weakness and of its final dissolution, is
found in the fact that this system does not carry
on production for the benefit of society as a whole
but for the profit of a relatively small owning class.
The great industries by which society must live
are owned by private individuals who ruthlessly
exploit the masses who work in these industries.
Under capitalism production is regulated not by
the needs of the masses but by whether or not the
capitalist class can make a profit by such produc-
tion; commodities are not produced primarily for
use, but for profit.

The system of private ownership and production
for profit generates the whole series of contradic-

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 21

tions and conflicts — economic, political and social
— which torment present day society, causing dis-
ruption in the economic life and violent struggles
between individual capitalists, between social classes
and between capitalist States. This maze of con-
flict turns around the two major contradictions
into which the basic contradiction of capitalism re-
solves itself. The first of these is economic, the
tendency of capitalist production to exceed the buy-
ing capacity of the masses and thus to cause crises
of over-production. The second contradiction is
social in character, the division of capitalist society
into classes of exploiters and producers, with re-
sultant class struggle between them. The first
contradiction, making for the disruption of capi-
talist economy and the impoverishment of the
masses, provides the objective conditions for even-
tual revolution ; the second, organizing the political
struggle of the toiling masses, prepares the sub-
jective factor, the revolutionary working class.

Now let us examine briefly the first of these
major contradictions, the tendency of capitalist
production to outstrip the markets, to cause over-
production. Over-production is inherent in the
capitalist system because the toiling masses, robbed
in the industries by the employers, are paid back
in the shape of wages only a fraction of the value
they create. The wage of the worker remains
essentially at the subsistence level, regardless of his
productive capacity.

22 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

This exploitation results in a piling up of com-
modities in the hands of the capitalists, for natu-
rally a worker getting a wage of three to five
dollars a day cannot buy back the ten to twenty or
more dollars' worth of commodities he has pro-
duced. This gap between his producing and buy-
ing powers widens by the constant increase in the
workers' productive capacity through machinery
and the speed-up and also by the lowering of their
standards of living. The gigantic booty in the
possession of the capitalists is further increased by
their wholesale robbery of the poor farmers by pay-
ing them low prices for their products, charging
them monopoly prices for the commodities they
must buy, loading them down with exorbitant taxes,
usurious loans, etc.

The capitalists waste huge masses of these stolen
commodities through luxurious living, by the crea-
tion of hordes of parasitic occupations, by immense
military establishments and wars. They seek to
dispose of them by export trade. But the sur-
pluses are not exhausted by these means. There
is an inevitable tendency to glut the market with
unsaleable commodities. Even though, as now,
the millions of producers, who make up the bulk of
the population, may actually starve and die for
want of the barest necessities of life, the market
suffers from over-production.

This basic tendency of capitalism to over-pro-
duction (while the masses starve) results in actual

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 23

economic crisis because of the competitive character
of the capitalist system. Under capitalism there
is and can be no general plan of production to fit
social needs. Capitalist production is anarchic.
The innumerable individual capitalists and com-
panies, ruthlessly exploiting the toiling masses,
produce whatever they think they can sell by dint
of sharp competition with each other. The results
are, the impoverished masses not being able to buy
back what they have produced, over-expansion of
the industries, a general flooding of the markets
and a hastening of the capitalist crisis of over-
production.

But the basic tendency of capitalism towards
over-production does not result in immediate and
chronic industrial stagnation, because it is partially
offset by a counter tendency towards the expansion
of the capitalist market. Among the principal
factors historically in this market expansion have
been the extension of capitalism upon a world scale,
with a consequent wide development of transporta-
tion and communication industries, the gradual
conquest of the peasant and handicraft occupations
and their re-organization upon a capitalist basis,
the large increase in population in all countries, the
building of elementary public services such as
water and lighting plants in many countries, the
huge growth of munitions making and the military
establishment, etc.

These developments of the capitalist market have

24* TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

provided outlets for the investment of the capital
robbed from the workers in the shape of surplus
value. But the tendency for the market to expand
has always lagged behind the tendency to clog
the market with over-production. In consequence
there is periodic need for the readjustment of
these mutually antagonistic tendencies. These re-
adjustments are the cyclical crises of capitalism.

Marx made the first analysis of the causes and
consequences of these crises. Cyclical crises are
common to all capitalists countries, including the
United States, which has experienced 15 of such
major economic disturbances since 1814. In the
various countries the cycles have averaged from
seven to nine years. The development of the capi-
talist system has not been even and steady, but by
a series of jerks. The zigzag graph made by the
cyclical crises is the normal graph of capitalist
growth the world over.

The general course of the capitalist cycle is quite
familiar. First, the upward trend, a period of in-
dustrial expansion, with rising prices and wages,
an era of good employment, "prosperity" and op-
timism, gradually developing into a boom, with its
characteristic orgies of feverish production, stock
speculation, etc.; secondly, the downward trend,
with the gradual surfeit of the market from excess
production, slowing down of industry, wage-cuts,
fall of prices, mass unemployment, financial "pan-
ics" and general economic crisis; and thirdly, the

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 25

trough of the crisis, in which the productive forces
are diminished and the choking surplus of com-
modities, in the low state of production, are con-
sumed or wasted in various ways and the markets
thus cleared for a fresh race between the swiftly
expanding productive forces and the more slowly
developing capitalist market.

But the cyclical crisis is more than an economic
disturbance. It also greatly sharpens the major
social contradiction of capitalism, the ever-active
antagonism between the working class and the
capitalist class. In economic crises the capitalists
always seek to shift the economic burden onto the
workers through wage-cuts, etc., and this still
further stokes the class struggle. Hence, the capi-
talist cyclical crises have been especially periods
of great strikes fiercely fought, growing class con-
sciousness of the workers, etc.

The present economic crisis bears this cyclical
character, but it develops under the special condi-
tions of the deepening general crisis of capitalism,
which profoundly change its character and deepen
its effects in every direction.

The General Crisis of Capitalism

THE TREND of capitalist development is not, how-
ever, a simple repetition of cycles, with capitalism
necessarily having a broadened base and stronger
sinews after each cyclical crisis. It is a bourgeois

26 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

fallacy that production and exchange, in the long
run, automatically balance each other under capi-
talism, that the capitalist market mechanically ex-
pands to accommodate the increased production.
On the contrary, as we have seen, the capitalist
system, in its very essence, leads to over-pro-
duction. This tendency to over-production is vastly
strengthened as capitalism develops. The pro-
ductive powers of the workers more and more
outrun their consumptive capacity. Thus the ma-
jor economic contradiction of capitalism, that be-
tween production and exchange, becomes ever
deeper and more devastating, and with it, like its
shadow, grows an intensification of the revolu-
tionary class struggle.

Capitalism can live only by a rapid extension of
its market, so that the ever-increasing masses of
surplus value robbed from the workers may be
disposed of through new capital investment.
Therefore, the widening of the gap between the
productive forces and the consuming power of the
impoverished masses progressively brings the whole
capitalist system into broader and deeper crises,
into sharper class struggle, and eventually into
decay and decline. Karl Marx clearly foresaw the
development of this general crisis of capitalism
when, speaking of the manner of liquidating the
cyclical crises, he said it was "paving the way for
more extensive and more destructive crises and
diminishing the means whereby crises are pre-

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 27

vented." As Varga says: "Each cycle is at the
same time a step in the history of capitalism, bring-
ing it nearer to its termination." 1X So far, in fact,
has this general trend gone that the world capi-
talist system can be said definitely to have entered
its period of decay. That is, capitalism no longer
has to deal simply with cyclical crises, each of which
left it upon a higher plane, but a growing general
crisis, political as well as economic, which marks
its decline as a world system.

The history of capitalist development may be
divided into two general eras, industrial capitalism
and imperialism. The former was the period of
"healthy" capitalism, of its rapid rise and exten-
sion; the latter is the period of its decay and de-
cline. As Lenin says, "Imperialism is the final
stage of capitalism." Regarding the early phase
of capitalism, the Program of the Communist In-
ternational states:

"The period of industrial capitalism was, in the main, a
period of 'free competition,' a period of a steady develop-
ment and expansion of capitalism throughout the entire
world, when the as yet unoccupied colonies were being
divided up and conquered by armed force; a period of
continued growth of the inherent contradictions of capi-
talism, the burden of which fell mainly upon the sys-
tematically plundered, crushed and oppressed colonial
periphery."

Imperialism is the era of monopolistic capitalism.
It has been analysed by Lenin in his Imperialism,

11 International Press Correspondence, No. 27, 1931.

28 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

which may be summarized as follows: (a), the con-
centration of industry and the development of
trusts and other monopoly forms; (b), the concen-
tration of banking capital and its amalgamation
with industrial capital under the hegemony of fi-
nance capital; (c), the export of capital from the
imperialist countries; (d), the division of the world
among monopolistic unions of capitalists, cartels,
syndicates and trusts; (e), the territorial division
of the world among the great imperial powers.

The correctness of this elementary analysis is
clear. It would serve no purpose to summon sta-
tistics to show the gigantic growth of trusts and
powerful banks in all capitalist countries, and the
supremacy of finance capital. The significance of
the export of capital is that when it takes place it
means that the faster developing productive forces
have quite outrun the slower developing home mar-
ket in the given country and that it becomes neces-
sary to find foreign markets for the excess of
capital and other commodities. All the great capi-
talist countries have reached this stage, England
being the earliest and most classical example. The
growth of the international trusts and cartels and
"spheres of influence" are a matter of common
knowledge. And as for Lenin's final proposition,
the division of the world among the capitalist pow-
ers with the growth of imperialism, he says: "In
1876 three powers had no colonies; and a third one,
France, had hardly any. In 1914 those four pow-

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 29

ers had acquired a colonial empire of 14,100,000
square kilometers, or approximately one and a half
times greater than the area of Europe, with a popu-
lation of some 100,000,000 souls . . . the division
of the world was 'completed' by the dawn of the
20th century." 12

The United States began clearly to show its im-
perialistic character about 1900. This was evi-
denced by the intensification of the growth of
trusts, the rapid rise to dominance of the great
banking interests, and by the beginnings of a sys-
tem of colonies through the seizure of the Philip-
pines, Cuba, Porto Rico, etc., and the development
of "spheres of influence" in China, Latin America,
etc. All these tendencies increased with the pas-
sage of the years, but it was only after the World
War that American imperialism came to maturity.
Fattening upon the slain of that great slaughter,
with the other imperialist countries paralysed by
the murderous struggle, American imperialism was
able to export capital (including the war loans) to
the gigantic amount of 27 billion dollars. It has
widely penetrated into a score of Latin American
countries, reducing them to semi-colonies. Its in-
fluence in Canada is tremendous. It tries, with its
Young Plan and other financial schemes of enslave-
ment, to reduce Europe to its control. It has a
hand in every imperialistic robbery in China and
Africa. With its great navy and potentially tre-

12 Imperialism, p. 66.

30 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

mendous military establishment, it has become the
most powerful and ruthless of imperialist powers,
aiming at hegemony over the world.

The development of world imperialism enor-
mously sharpened all the contradictions of capital-
ism. The major economic contradiction between
the producing and consuming powers of the masses
was vastly deepened. The productive powers were
increased, the exploitation of the workers in the in-
dustrial countries and the colonial masses was in-
tensified. The class struggle became more acute,
the war danger more menacing. The great pow-
ers began to fight more relentlessly to conquer the
lagging world markets to dispose of their choking
surpluses of commodities, to win new sources of
supplies of raw materials for their industries and
to re-divide the world to their respective advan-
tage. Capitalism began definitely to show signs
of the developing general crisis.

The World War was a great clash of the sharp-
ening imperialist antagonisms, an acute expression
of the growing general crisis of the capitalist econ-
omy. It was an attempt of the various powers to
solve their deepening problems by eliminating each
other as competitors in the world market and by re-
dividing the colonial world. The capitalist na-
tions, developing with uneven tempo, could not
tolerate the pre-existing division of markets and
colonies. The great capitalist crisis which was the
World War naturally caused a tremendous inten-

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 31

sification of the class struggle. Revolutionary
upheavals took place in many countries. The out-
standing result was the loss to capitalism of one'
sixth of the globe, Russia, and what prevented its
losing Germany, Italy and several other countries
were the counter-revolutionary activities of the So-
cialist parties against the revolutionary workers,
which defeated the revolution in these countries.

After the great war and these revolutionary up-
heavals, which nearly killed it, capitalism got a
brief breathing spell. By 1924 it had achieved
what the Communist International called a "par-
tial and temporary stabilization/' both economi-
cally, and politically. Economically this was based
upon the replacement of the material destruction
wrought by the war, catching up with the war-
caused building shortage, and by investment of
capital necessary to rationalize antiquated indus-
tries in various countries; and politically it was
based on the defeat of the revolutionary attempts
of the proletariat.

But this breathing spell for capitalism did not
last long. The tendency for capitalist production
to outrun the markets soon manifested itself
stronger than ever. In a number of capitalist
countries there has been an intense rationalization
of industry. Thus in the United States, which is
the extreme illustration, from 1923 to 1928 there
was a total of 200,000 less workers required to pro-

32 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

duce 42% more in the industries.13 On the rail-
roads a given quantity of freight is transported now
by 33% fewer workers than 20 years ago.14 Tug-
well shows increases in efficiency in the various
industries, 1914 to 1925, of from 10% (meat pack-
ing) to 210% (automobiles).15 And in agricul-
ture, 14% less farm workers produced 20% more
crops in 1925 than in 1910.16 Besides, in the
colonial and semi-colonial countries, such as India,
China, Africa, Australia, etc., there has been con-
siderable industrialization in spite of the deter-
mined efforts of the imperialist countries to prevent
it and to retain these countries simply as markets
for their manufactured articles and as sources of
raw materials.

The purchasing power of the masses has in no
sense kept pace with this increased producing
capacity. On the contrary, there has been a vast
crippling of the capitalist market through whole-
sale reductions in the real wages of workers and
the incomes of farmers the world over; that is, by
the widespread impoverishment and decline in the
living standards of the masses. The result is a
great clogging of the world markets and the
present unprecedented economic crisis.

is A. F. of L., Business Survey, November, 1931.

i* Labor Fact Book, p. 107.

15 Industry's Coming of Age, p. 3.

1° Harvey Baum, p. 73.

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 33

The Decaying Capitalist System

IN RECENT years, especially since the beginning of
the present economic crisis, the process of the con-
centration of capital has been greatly speeded in
all sections of capitalist economy and in all capi-
talist countries. In the United States this has
been marked by the wholesale wiping out of small
business, the mergers of banks, the liquidation of
stock-holdings of the petty bourgeoisie, the con-
fiscation of great areas of farm land by foreclosure,
etc. This rapid concentration of capital intensifies
all the contradictions of capitalism.

It has produced, together with the unparalleled
depth and breadth of the economic crisis and mass
starvation, previously discussed, many other mani-
festations which, in sum, constitute the general
crisis and decay of capitalism in this, its final stage
of monopoly and imperialism. Most of these de-
cay factors were already in evidence, but the pres-
ent economic crisis is greatly emphasizing and
developing them. They sharpen the capitalist con-
tradictions in every direction. They intensify the
contradiction between the capitalist methods of
production and exchange; they broaden and deepen
the struggles between workers and capitalists, be-
tween the various capitalist countries, between the
imperialist countries and the colonies, and between
the two world systems represented by capitalism as
a whole and the U.S.S.R. They are undermining

34 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

the foundations and breaking down the very fiber
of capitalism. They make more and more for in-
dustrial paralysis, mass starvation, war, revolution.

Some of the more outstanding of these manifes-
tations of the growing general crisis are, without
analyzing in detail the specific gravity of each:

(a) Over-expansion of Industry: In view of
the limited capacities of the capitalist markets,
there is a large over-expansion of the industrial
plant in all the leading capitalist countries. This
constantly grows more pronounced. The United
States is a striking example of this condition. It
is typically illustrated by the automobile industry
with a capacity estimated at 10,000,000 cars yearly
and a record output of but 4,500,000; the bitumi-
nous coal mines with a capacity of 750,000,000 tons
yearly and an output (1929) of 535,000,000; the
steel industry with a capacity of 65,000,000 tons
and a maximum output (1929) of 56,000,000; tex-
tiles with 50% excess plant capacity, etc. Even
in the greatest boom periods these capacities can-
not be fully utilized. Such conditions, common to
the most highly industrialized countries of capi-
talism, are not only basic causes of the economic
crisis but also prolific breeders of the ultra-reac-
tionary practices of the destruction of commodities
and such dismantling of industry as the present
proposal to tear out 100,000 British looms and
10,000,000 spindles.

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 35

(b) Chronic Industrial Stagnation: In the
growing general crisis of capitalism there is an
intensification of the whole phenomenon of the eco-
nomic crisis. As Varga says: "Crises now follow
more speedily upon one another, attain a greater
depth, and shake bourgeois rule more violently than
before." Besides this, whole sections of the capi-
talist economy, even before the present crisis, had
fallen into a state of more or less chronic depression.
Thus England and Germany, the one with its for-
eign trade ruined and the other hamstrung by its
imperialist rivals, had been in practically perma-
nent crisis since the end of the war. Besides, the
older industries (coal, textiles, shipbuilding, etc.)
had suffered a similar stagnation in all industrial
countries including the United States; only the
newer industries (automobiles, chemicals, electri-
cal, etc.) experiencing substantial growth and ex-
pansion. As for agriculture, it had been in a
prolonged world-wide crisis of unprecedented di-
mensions, due primarily to a vast over-production
of wheat, cotton, rubber, coffee, sugar, etc., caused
by the lowered buying power of the world's toilers,
improved methods of production, increased acre-
age, etc.

The present economic crisis, despite eventual re-
covery here and there, will unquestionably intensify
and spread this condition of chronic industrial stag-
nation. At the same time that the purchasing
capacity of the producing masses drops, the ra-

36 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

tionalization of industry is proceeding apace, at
least on the stronger sectors of capitalism. A. T.
Sloan says, for example: "As a result of the re-
adjustment and refinement that is going on, our
industrial machine is more efficient, more effective
from every standpoint than ever before in its his-
tory." 17 That is it exactly; more able than ever
to flood the sickly market with a fresh mass of un-
saleable commodities. We can be sure that the
present economic crisis will involve the older indus-
tries and weaker sections of capitalist economy into
still deeper and more permanent stagnation.

(c) Permanent Mass Unemployment: Through-
out the leading capitalist countries, as one of the
most basic features of the growing crisis of capi-
talism, is an ever-increasing army of unemployed.
Capitalism, unable to provide work for the work-
ers, faces permanent mass unemployment on a
gigantic scale. This tendency was typically illus-
trated by the large army of jobless in England
ever since the end of the World War, and by the
fact that in the United States, even during the
boom period of 1929, there were at least 3,000,000
unemployed. In Germany and England it has
reached the point where many youths graduate
from school and reach manhood without ever hav-
ing had a job, and with little prospect of getting
one. In the present economic crisis this perma-
nently jobless mass of workers, full of fatal por-

n New York Times, Jan. 7, 1932.

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 37

tent to capitalism, is being added to by many mil-
lions.18

(d) The Choking of International Trade: One
of the sure signs of the decline of capitalism is the
systematic strangling of international trade that is
now taking place. This is being done principally
by high tariffs and under slogans of "economic na-
tionalism" and "autarchy." In their bitter fight
for markets, the capitalist countries generally have
adopted the double-phased policy of high tariffs
and dumping. Tariffs everywhere are at un-
precedented heights and constantly going higher.
"Free trade" England has now become a leader in
this reactionary movement. The general result is
to greatly intensify the industrial paralysis and
trade stagnation. The tendency is for each capi-
talist country to wall itself off from the commerce
of the others. Mussolini says: "This blockading
of the free flow of trade has caught hold of the
world and the grip is placed like that of a power-
ful wrestler on his adversary. It cannot move its
component parts and though it writhes and rebels
it is helpless." 19 Then, to show what a construc-
tive program Fascism has, he jacks up the Italian
tariff a few notches and launches a "Buy Italian"
campaign to match the "Buy British," "Buy

is Marx (Capital, Vol. I, p. 308) indicated the revolutionary-
significance of the rapidly growing army of unemployed when he
said : "A development of the productive forces which would diminish
the actual number of laborers . . . would cause a revolution, be-
cause it would put the majority of the population on the shelf."

i» New York American, Dec. 27, 1931.

38 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

French," etc. movements. This "economic na-
tionalism" cannot lessen, but must intensify the
general crisis of capitalism.

(e) The Breakdown of the Medium of Ex-
change: An important sign of the general weaken-
ing of capitalism is the breakdown of the medium
of exchange in the individual countries and inter-
nationally. More than half of the capitalist world
is now off the gold standard, and the percentage
constantly grows; in every capitalist country, in-
cluding the United States (Finance Reconstruction
Corporation, etc. ) , various systems of inflating the
currency are in effect. Not only are the individual
capitalist countries of themselves unable to main-
tain a stable currency, but, in their brutal struggles
with each other, they are breaking down the capi-
talist exchange medium generally. They fight to
bankrupt each other. The raid on the mark early
in 1931 smashed the German and Austrian finan-
cial system, compelled the United States to grant
the moratorium, forced Germany and Austria to
their knees before French imperialism and almost
provoked a gigantic economic collapse in Central
Europe. The raid on the pound following soon
after drove Great Britain off the gold standard,
wrecked the Labor government and deposed Lon-
don as the world's money center. Then came the
raid on the dollar, which cost the United States the
loss of $500,000,000 in 20 days and which menaces
the gold standard in this country. All this was

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 39

tied up with the internecine struggle over the ques-
tion of the international war debts and reparations.

(f) The Development of Fascism: Another of
the pronounced symptoms of the decline of capi-
talism is the growth of Fascism in various forms
in all capitalist countries. The capitalists, faced
with the task of drastically slashing the living
standards of the workers and poor peasants and,
where the political crisis is acute, the job of trying
to save the capitalist system itself, no longer find
adequate their bourgeois "democracy," of which the
Social Democracy is a part, to hold the rebellious
masses in check. Consequently, with the aid of the
Social Democrats, or Social Fascists,20 they are
transforming the masked "democratic" capitalist
dictatorship into open Fascist dictatorship, with its
extreme demagogy and use of violence against the
workers and poor peasants. Mussolini is not the
symbol of a new era of capitalist development, but
the sign of a decadent system of society vainly try-
ing to hold back the clock of social progress.

(g) The Birth of a New World Social System:
The most significant of all signs of the decline of
capitalism is the rise of the Union of Socialist
Soviet Republics. Capitalism no longer stands
dominant in the world with its only rival the de-
clining remnants of feudalism. Today it faces a
new and deadly rival, the forerunner of the new

20 Communists use the terms "Social Democrat," "Social Fascist"
and "Social Reformist" practically interchangeably; why, we shall
see in Chapter IV.

40 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

world social order. The rise of the Soviet Union
enormously weakens the world capitalist system.
Capitalism has thereby lost territorially one-sixth
of the globe, and it is rapidly losing more to the
Chinese Soviets; it has lost control of the great
markets and raw materials of what was old Russia ;
it suffers enormously in loss of prestige in the com-
parison of its industrial crisis and generally de-
cadent conditions with the great advance of the
U.S.S.R.; it confronts the deadly menace of its
workers inspired and organized by this great ex-
ample of the success of Socialism. And all these
losses and dangers for capitalism in the rise of the
U.S.S.R. will increase as time goes on.

To the foregoing signs of the growing capitalist
crisis and decline many more could be added, in-
cluding the increase of the socially parasitic classes
of mere bond clippers, the growth of artificial stimu-
lants for the market such as instalment buying, the
reversion to pre-capitalist forms of production and
barter, the smothering of inventions and improved
methods of production, etc. But most significant
are the menacing danger of war and the world- wide
revolutionary upsurge of the toiling masses.

The War Danger

WAK is inevitable under the capitalist system.
Imperialism is the era of great world wars. The
capitalist imperialists consciously use war as a

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 41

weapon for furthering their interests just as they
do tariffs and dumping. They cold-bloodedly send
millions to slaughter in order to eliminate their
imperialist competitors and to reduce whole popu-
lations to their programs of exploitation. The
general crisis of capitalism, with its vastly sharpen-
ing antagonisms, is fast driving capitalism to a
new world war; in fact, war is already here, in
Manchuria and China proper. Only 14 years after
the great "war to end all war" we stand on the
brink of a still more frightful shambles.

How deliberately capitalists consider war as a
necessary part of their business was shown by the
New York correspondent of the London Daily
Telegraph who, on Dec. 23, 1916, wrote: "The
rumors of peace which were current during the
last week caused alarm on the New York Exchange
and a sharp drop in the value of bonds. The price
of wheat dropped heavily. Everybody is talking
about the disasters which will occur upon the con-
clusion of peace." Now the capitalists of the world
are just as cynically looking to war as the broad
way out of the present crisis. They see in mass
murder on the battlefields the way to make busi-
ness good with bonanza profits for themselves.
They are circulating propaganda among the un-
employed workers that war is the only way to re-
start the crippled industries, to do away with
unemployment. They prepare war to beat back
the advancing world revolution, to overthrow the

42 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

Soviet Union. The cynical militarist, General
William Mitchell, says: "Many nations think that
at this time a foreign war would do them a great
deal more good than domestic insurrection and
revolution." 21

But capitalism, characteristically, hides its war
plans behind a mask of pacifism. This is to throw
dust in the eyes of the masses who would rebel
against a frank statement of imperialist war aims.
As the war nears the capitalists multiply their
camouflage peace conferences, disarmament meets,
etc., behind which the preparations for war pro-
ceed ever faster. For modern warfare pacifism is
just as necessary as airplanes. It is characteristic
of capitalist pacifist hypocrisy that the principal
architect of the militaristic French imperialism,
Briand, is hailed as the great apostle of interna-
tional peace.

The League of Nations is not a peace-striving
institution, as the capitalists and their Social Fas-
cist flunkeys would have us believe; it is a grouping
of imperialist bandits intent only upon their own
schemes of mass exploitation and war making.
The Kellogg Pact, instead of being, as Nicholas M.
Butler says, "the supreme act of the age in which
we live," is a monstrous lure to blind the masses to
the slaughter that is being prepared. In Man-
churia, Japan, a member of the League and a
signer of the Pact, wiped its feet on this "scrap of

21 Liberty, Jan. 30, 1932.

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 43

paper" and exposed the League of Nations' im-
perialist character. And what could be more
bankrupt than the present "disarmament" confer-
ence of the League now being held in Geneva.

The Social Fascists and bourgeois pacifists who
support the various "peace" plans of the capitalist
governments (while at the same time they vote the
war budgets) are only catspaws; they play the
game of imperialism by creating illusions among
the masses that the warlike capitalist governments
actually want peace. Only by the mass resistance
of the workers can the war plans of the capitalists
be delayed; only when the toiling masses have de-
feated the world bourgeoisie can war be abolished
altogether.

Behind the smoke-screen of pacifism war arma-
ments pile up. Now they are greater than ever
before in "peace" times. Over 10,000,000 men are
now under arms and 35,000,000 are in reserve.
The total world military expenditures are now 5
billion dollars yearly, against 2^ billion in 1913,
with the United States expending far more for its
armed forces than any other nation.22 If the price
index is taken as a basis it is found that since 1928
military expenditures of the principal powers have
increased as follows: United States 48%, Japan
40 % , France 43 % , Italy 25 % . The following fig-
ures show the large increases in the direct military

22 "War and its by-products (pensions, etc.) cost the United
States government $2,201,390,992 during the fiscal year that ended
last June."— United Press dispatch, Feb. 3, 1932.

44 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

outlay of the five great powers, the United States,
Great Britain, France, Japan and Italy:

1914 $1,182,000,000

1923 1,828,000,000

1928 2,167,000,000

1930 2,324,000,000

These huge expenditures are being accompanied
by an unheard-of militarization and mobilization of
the masses and the whole industrial system for war.
New and hideous weapons are constantly being de-
vised for mass murder; frightful poison gases and
germ bombs; airplanes, tanks, submarines, etc., a
hundred times more efficient at wholesale killing of
human beings than during the World War. The
decadent capitalist system, fighting to prolong its
anti-social existence, menaces the very life of the
peoples with its program of mass slaughter.

What these murderous war preparations mean is
indicated by the jingo General Mitchell, who is
trying to stir up a war against Japan. He says:
"These (Japanese) towns, built largely of wood
and paper, form the greatest aerial targets the
world has ever seen. . . Incendiary projectiles
would burn the cities to the ground in short order.
An attack by gas, surging down through the val-
leys, would completely blot their population out." 23
And even as I write these lines, Japanese planes
are bombarding and burning Shanghai, slaughter-

23 Liberty, Jan. 30, 1932.

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 45

ing thousands of non-combatants. Stuart Chase,
under the heading, "The Two-Hour War," gives
a vivid picture of the new capitalist war-makers in
action :

"War is declared. Nay, war is only threatened — for
he who speaks first, speaks last. In Bremen, or Calais,
a thousand men climb into the cockpits of a thousand
aircraft, and under each is slung a bomb which the pres-
sure of finger may release. A starting signal, an hour or
two of flight — one muffled roar after another as the
bombs are dropped per schedule — and so, the civiliza-
tion which gave Bacon, Newton, and Watt to the world,
comes, in something like half an hour, to a close. Fin-
ished and done. London, Liverpool, Manchester, Lan-
cashire, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds. Not even a rat, not
even an ant, not even a roach, can survive the entire and
thorough lack of habitability.24

The world stands in the most imminent danger
of such a horrible blood bath. The whole capitalist
system is a maze of acute war antagonisms, bred
of and stoked by the increasing general capitalist
crisis. The deeper the crisis, the more acute the
war danger. Growing Fascism, with its intense
nationalism, renders the danger all the sharper.
The war antagonisms flare up between the various
capitalist powers, between the imperialist countries
and the colonial and semi-colonial countries, and
especially between world imperialism and the
Soviet Union. In order to preserve their system
of exploitation the capitalists are proceeding direct

24 Men and Machines, p. 310.

46 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

to a slaughter, beside which that of 1914-18 will
seem pale, and which may well result in the de-
struction of the capitalist system. But, of this,
more anon.

Among the great capitalist powers there exist
many antagonisms, any of which may produce a
devastating war, and these antagonisms constantly
become more acute under the pressure of the deep-
ening crisis of capitalism. Of them the more
important are: the struggle between the United
States and Great Britain for world imperialist
hegemony; 25 the conflict between the United States
and the rising system of French imperialism; the
four-cornered fight between the United States,
Japan, Great Britain and France for domination
of the Far East; the struggle between Great
Britain and France for financial supremacy and
general leadership in Europe; the struggle of
France and her vassal States (Poland, Rumania,
Czecho- Slovakia, etc.) to choke Germany into
submission and to hang on to their Versailles
Treaty blood booty; the sharp antagonisms between
France and Italy over control of the Mediter-
ranean area ; the tangle of potential war conflicts in
the Balkans; and, of present special acuteness, the
struggle between the United States and Japan for
imperialist control in the Far East. In short,
world capitalism presents the picture of a medley

25 For the vast ramifications of this great struggle see Ludwell
Denny's America Conquers Britain.

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 47

of hostile imperialist groupings preparing inevi-
tably to cut each other's throats, and if they have
not already done so it has been chiefly from fear of
revolutionary upheavals of the workers.

The antagonisms between the imperialist coun-
tries and the colonial and semi-colonial countries
likewise grow constantly more sharp. Stalin
says: "The European bourgeoisie is in a state of
war with 'its' colonies in India, Indo-China, Indo-
nesia and Northern Africa." 26 One of the basic
indications of the growing decline of world capi-
talism is the weakening of the hegemony of the
imperialist powers over the colonial countries, the
necessity of the imperialists to use more and more
armed force against the colonies. These growing
conflicts are caused primarily by the attempts of
the imperialist countries to shift the burden of the
crisis onto the colonial countries by means of in-
tensified exploitation of the peasants and workers,
tariffs, high taxes, the crippling of local industry,
etc., all backed by imperialist troops, and by the
rebellion of the colonial masses against this im-
poverishment. Great Britain, in increasing col-
lision with its dominions, Canada, South Africa,
Australia and Ireland, over the tariff and other
questions, proceeds with armed force, under the
leadership of the "Socialist" MacDonald, to crush
rebellious India. France maintains its grip peri-

2« Speech at the XVI Congress of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union.

48 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

lously upon Indo-China by "fiercest terror, mass
shootings, the annihilation of whole villages by
French occupational troops." Japan carries out
its colonial policy by the armed conquest of Man-
churia. And American imperialism, to hang onto
its great Latin- American hinterland, finds neces-
sary an ever-greater terrorism by its puppet gov-
ernments in Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile, Salvador, the
Philippines, etc. In all these situations lurks the
danger of sudden and far-reaching war.

But the greatest and most imminent of war
dangers is that between world imperialism and the
Soviet Union. This antagonism is the most fun-
damental of all economic, political and social con-
flicts. The major political objective of world capi-
talism is to overthrow the Soviet government. The
capitalists' central world strategy is to bridge over
their own contradictions sufficiently to enable them
to make a united front in war against the first
Workers' Republic. Ingrained in the very fibre
of world imperialism is the slogan, "Death to the
Soviet Union." This is the struggle between two
antagonistic world systems, capitalism and Social-
ism. It grows ever sharper with the deepening of
the general capitalist crisis. Upon this central
contradiction capitalism will eventually break its
worthless neck.

In 1918-20, at the very birth of the Soviet gov-
ernment, France, Great Britain, United States,
Germany, Japan, Czecho- Slovakia, Poland, etc.,

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 49

sent their armies against the revolutionary Rus-
sians. But these armed assaults were defeated by
the Soviet forces. The imperialist powers, faced
by dauntless revolutionary soldiers, fearing revolu-
tion at home and learning to their dismay that
their armies of workers and peasants often mu-
tinied rather than fight against the Russians (this
being the case also with the 310th United States
Infantry at Archangel), had to abandon for the
time being their program of violent overthrow of
the Soviets.

But the capitalist powers did not give up
their counter-revolutionary determination. With
French and American gold they built a steel
row of armed Fascist States along the Rus-
sian border; they established an economic, finan-
cial and political boycott against the Soviets; they
sabotaged the Russian industries from within; they
worked ceaselessly with their Social Fascist tools
to discredit the Soviet Union among the workers
of the world, as a preparation for a new armed
attack. With the manifest success of the Soviet
regime, especially the great victories of the Five-
Year Plan, the capitalists have redoubled the at-
tacks against the Soviet government. They have
flooded the world with anti-Russian propaganda
— charges of red imperialism, dumping, forced la-
bor, red plots, religious persecution, etc. France
has been the most militant in all this. Hardly less
active also is the United States, with its policy of

50 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

non-recognition, trade restriction, financial block-
ade, Fish committee propaganda, etc. ; this country,
the world center of capitalism, has always viewed
with undisguised hatred the world center of Com-
munism, the U.S.S.R.

In 1929 the imperialists made an effort to pro-
voke an anti- Soviet war by the seizure of the Chi-
nese Eastern Railroad through subsidized Chinese
generals. But this was defeated by the prompt
and victorious action of the Red Army. And the
exposures made in the famous trials of the In-
dustrial Party and the Mensheviks broke up the
plans for an armed intervention against the
U.S.S.R., scheduled to take place in the Spring
of 1931 under the leadership of the French Gen-
eral Staff. Doubtless, the great stores of wheat
assembled at that time by the Federal Farm Board
were to have been used to provision this war.

Now, in the Manchurian invasion by Japan,
world imperialism is developing a new and still
more dangerous attack against the Soviet Union.
In its present imperialist war against the Chinese,
Japan has clearly in mind the following objectives:
( 1 ) , the dismemberment of China and the capture
of its markets; (2), the crushing of the rapidly
spreading Chinese Soviets; (3), the establishment
of a strong base in Manchuria from which to
launch an early attack upon the Soviet Union.
The deliberation with which Japan is developing
this strategy against the U.S.S.R. is indicated by

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 51

the following quotation from a memorandum pre-
sented on July 25, 1927, by the then-Premier,
Tanaka, to the Mikado :

"The Chinese Eastern Railway will become ours just
as the South Manchurian Railway became ours, and we
shall seize Kirin as we seized Dairen. It seems that the
inevitability of crossing swords with Russia on the fields
of Mongolia in order to gain possession of the wealth of
North Manchuria is part of our program of national de-
velopment."

While the general strategy of world imperialism
is to develop the attack against the Soviet Union,
this does not go forward on the basis of a solid bloc
or united front of all its leaders with Japan, spear-
head of imperialism, in China. This is because
the violent antagonisms between the imperialist
powers prevent such a firm unity. France, which
actively prepares the offensive against the
U.S.S.R. through Poland, etc., is solidly united
with Japan and supports it. But England man-
euvers against France and Japan and has its eye
on its Chinese interests, especially in the Shanghai
district. As for the United States, it views with
alarm the strengthening of its traditional enemy in
the Pacific, Japan.

But all these powers are violent enemies of the
Soviet Union, and their mutual antagonisms do
not prevent the development of the imperialist at-
tack generally against the U.S.S.R. In the In-

m TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

ter -national Press Correspondence, Mar. 10, 1932,
a writer puts the situation thus :

"The sharpness of the imperialist antagonisms renders
difficult the formation of new groupings of power. But
— as the Japanese campaign in Manchuria and in the
Yangtse valley shows — it not only does not form an in-
surmountable obstacle to the immediate war preparations
but is also no obstacle preventing the world from creep-
ing into the world war, into military intervention against
the Soviet Union. As experience shows, these groupings
are formed at the outbreak and partly even in the course
of war, in the carrying out of military operations."

The danger of imperialist war against the
U.S.S.R. is now most acute. The imperialist ban-
dits are trying to force the Soviet Union into the
Manchurian war. That is the purpose of Japan's
studied insolence and provocation, its massing of
troops on the Soviet border, its organization of the
counter-revolutionary White Russians. And the
significance of the attempted assassination of
the Japanese ambassador in Moscow by Vanek, a
Czecho-Slovakian diplomat, was that France tried
to organize another Sarajevo. Only the steadfast
peace policy of the Soviet Union has prevented its
being enmeshed in war. But there is a limit to
such provocation. As Molotov says: "We do not.
need an inch of any other country's land; but
neither will we give up an inch of ours."

The capitalists clearly intend to thrust war upon
the Soviet Union. Their offensive may easily

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 53

come during 1932. The deepening general crisis
of their own system and the growing successes of
the U.S.S.R. inevitably drive them on to this war.
It is a situation that should arouse every worker
to fight against the robber war on China, and to
rally in defense of the Soviet Union. When the
capitalists, to save their bankrupt system, launch
their armed attack upon the U.S.S.R. to destroy
its new Socialism, they must be taught a revolu-
tionary lesson from which their system of robbery
and misery will never recover.

The World-Wide Revolutionary Upsurge.

THE MOST basic indication of the growing general
crisis of capitalism and its decline as the social or-
der is the increasing revolutionary upsurge
throughout the world. The toiling millions, find-
ing it impossible to live in the starvation condi-
tions everywhere developing, are gradually getting
ready to wipe out capitalism and to establish So-
cialism. In his profound analysis of capitalist
society, Marx says :

"Along with the constantly diminishing number of the
magnates of capital . . . grows the mass of misery, op-
pression, slavery, degradation, exploitation, but with this
grows the revolt of the working class, a class always in-
creasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by
the very mechanism of capitalist production itself." 27
*7 Capital, Vol. I, p. 836.

54 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

Reformist Socialists have always violently at-
tacked this conception of growing working class
pauperization and revolt. They have put in its
stead their own theory of the gradual rise in the
standards of the workers and their progressive
acceptance of capitalist evolution as the way to So-
cialism. For a period, during the rise of impe-
rialism in the leading industrial countries, bringing
about improved conditions for the labor aristoc-
racy, largely at the expense of the exploited co-
lonial masses, the workings of Marx's principle
were somewhat obscured. The opportunist Social-
ists were able to lend an air of plausibility to their
bourgeois theories about the advancing standards
of the working class under capitalism.

But now, with the development of the general
crisis of capitalism, the truth of Marx's formula-
tion stands out with crystal clearness. Truly, as
the Communist Manifesto says, "pauperism de-
velops more rapidly than population and wealth,"
and "it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit
any longer to be the ruling class in society . . .
because it is incompetent to assure an existence to
its slave in his slavery, because it cannot help let-
ting him sink into such a state that it has to feed
him, instead of being fed by him." That is, on the
one hand, as we have already seen, there is mass
impoverishment developing upon the most gigantic
scale, and on the other, as we shall now indicate,

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 55

there is the growing revolt of the workers, so
clearly foreseen by Marx.

The revolutionary upsurge of the workers and
peasants is worldwide. It varies in intensity,
corresponding to the uneven development of capi-
talism in the several countries, from intensified
strike movements to actual struggles for power.
Its tempo is greatly increased by the deepening of
the capitalist crisis. Hoover had a smell of its
significance when, in his message to Congress on
Dec. 8, 1931, he informs us that: "Within two
years there have been revolutions or acute social
disorders in 19 countries, embracing more than half
the population of the world." The resolution of
the XI Plenum of the Executive Committee of the
Communist International, (April, 1931), thus
analyses the situation:

"There has been a further increase in the revolutionary
upsurge bound up with the sharp reduction in the stand-
ard of living of the working class, the monstrous develop-
ment of unemployment, the ruination of the office workers
and urban petty bourgeoisie, the mass robbery of the
peasantry, the extreme impoverishment of the colonies
and the growing revolutionizing role of the U.S.S.R.

"The growing revolutionary upsurge found expression
in: (a) the further intensification of the strike struggle
and the unemployment movement, (b), the development
and strengthening of Soviets and of the Red Army over
a considerable area in China, (c), the growth of the revo-
lutionary movement in the colonies, (d), the development
of the revolutionary peasant movement, (e), the growth

56 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

of the political and organizational influence of a number
of important Communist Parties (Germany, China,
Czecho-Slovakia, Poland), (f), the sharp intensification
of oppositional ferments within the Social Democracy,
(g), the growth of an opposition among the petty bour-
geois masses of the towns, office employees and civil
servants."

!

In the months since the foregoing was written
the revolutionary upsurge has been accelerated on
every front. In the industrial countries of Eu-
rope the strike movement has been greatly broad-
ened and intensified, in spite of the efforts of the
powerfully intrenched Socialists to stifle all strug-
gle. The strikes are more numerous, they include
more workers and they are more militantly carried
on. During this period one of the most striking
events was the mutiny of the British Navy sailors
against a wage-cut. This affair sent a shiver along
the spine of the world bourgeoisie.

The United States is not exempt from the de-
veloping world-wide movement of struggle.
American workers, faced by intolerable conditions,
are also exhibiting the characteristic signs of radi-
calization. During 1931 the number of strikers
doubled over the previous year. A series of im-
portant strikes have been carried on (coal miners
in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia,
Kentucky and the anthracite districts, textile work-
ers in Lawrence, Allentown, Paterson, etc.) in
spite of the rankest betrayal by the A. F. of L.

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 57

leadership, all these strikes being very militant in
character. The unemployed are also showing
increased radicalization, indicated by such im-
portant movements as the National Hunger March,
the Ford Hunger March, the big demonstrations
in Chicago, Cleveland, etc.; notwithstanding the
extreme brutality of the police, nine workers hav-
ing been killed in the three latter movements. The
Negro workers, in strikes and unemployment
movements, have been distinguished for their mili-
tancy, the Camp Hill and Scottsboro outrages be-
ing attempts of local authorities to terrify them.
Among the skilled workers a striking demonstra-
tion of the radicalization taking place is the rank
and file referendum of unemployment insurance in
the A. F. of L., a movement involving hundreds of
thousands of workers and going directly contrary
to the policy of the reactionary leadership. These
are only a few indications of the deep-going radi-
calization now taking place among the American
working class. But, of this subject, more will be
said in Chapter IV.

In Germany events are moving towards a revo-
lutionary political crisis. The masses of workers,
in spite of Socialist treachery and Fascist repres-
sion, are preparing to free themselves from the
tyranny of the Versailles Treaty and its Young
Plan, and with it, from the capitalist system itself.
The Communist party, rapidly growing, now
counts almost five million votes. The proletarian

58 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

revolution advances irresistibly in Germany. It
is in the vain hope of defeating it that the employ-
ers are building up Fascism through the Social
Fascists, the Bruening government and the Hitler
movement.

Poland is another country where the revolution
begins to menace capitalism. The industrial and
agrarian crises are acute. More than half the
workers are either wholly or partly unemployed.
One wave of wage-cuts follows another. The
peasants are expropriated in masses for non-pay-
ment of rent. The country is burdened with
militarism. The various national minorities are
ruthlessly repressed. The country is stagnant
from the loss of its former Russian markets. In
this situation the Communist party, in spite of the
ferocious terror of Pilsudski and Social Fascist
treachery, steadily gains ground. The workers
and peasants are becoming rapidly revolutionized.
Great strikes, unemployment demonstrations and
anti-tax and rent movements in the villages develop
in rapid succession. There is a revolutionary
storm brewing.

Spain is also a country where capitalism faces
a developing revolutionary crisis. The producing
masses suffer intolerable exploitation and misery
from capitalist and semi-feudal conditions. The
first phase of their revolt swept away the mon-
archy; now it turns sharply against capitalism it-
self. Social Fascist, Anarchist and Syndicalist

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 59

illusions still act as a brake on the movement, but
the revolutionary Communist party constantly be-
comes stronger. The recent seizure of many towns
and villages and the hoisting of the red flag are
forerunners of the revolutionary struggle that is
on its way.

Throughout the whole Asian colonial and semi-
colonial world the revolutionary upsurge manifests
itself upon a gigantic scale. The basic trend of
the hundreds of millions of toilers in these countries
is towards Socialism, not capitalism. The efforts
of the national bourgeoisie, led by the Gandhis,
Chang Kai Sheks, etc., to build up a powerful
capitalism shatter themselves upon the rocks of the
world industrial and agrarian crisis, the determina-
tion of the imperialists (to whom the native bour-
geoisie always surrenders) to prevent the in-
dustrialization of the colonies, and the revolu-
tionary struggles of the vast masses of incredibly
exploited and impoverished workers and peasants.
Under the increasing leadership of the Communist
International, these revolutionary national strug-
gles develop more and more, not only into fights
again American, British, Japanese, French and
Dutch imperialist domination, but against the whole
capitalist system. Asia is now undergoing pro-
found revolutionary developments.

In China, 70,000,000 people are already living
under the Provisional Chinese Soviet government,
organized Nov. 7, 1931. The Chinese Red Army

60 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

controls one-sixth of China and is constantly
spreading its influence. It is now hammering at
the gates of Hankow. Strikes and peasant move-
ments develop in many other parts of China. The
prestige of the Kuomintang diminishes ; that of the
Communist party rises. "Everywhere a decided
swing to the left is evident" said a New York Times
Chinese correspondent on Jan. 20, 1931. And 11
days later another said in the same paper : "Again
the Communists are making rapid progress in or-
ganizing town and country Soviets as rapidly as
they overrun new territory . . . the peasants and
common people are giving a hearty welcome to the
returning Communists. They say that after com-
paring their status under previous Communist rule
with the bad government and confiscatory taxation
enforced upon them after the arrival of the Nan-
king troops last Summer, they enjoyed greater lib-
erty and a greater degree of prosperity under the
Reds than under Nanking." It was largely the
fear of the growing Chinese revolution, its tre-
mendous effect upon the vast millions of Asia, the
danger of a great Russian-Chinese Soviet Union,
that determined the imperialists upon their present
war to partition China and to lay the basis for an
attack upon the Soviet Union.

In India the revolutionary struggle, while not
so advanced as in China, rapidly gains momentum.
The masses of peasants and workers are beginning
to break with the counter-revolutionary non-re-

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 61

sistance policies of Gandhi, which paralyze their
struggle and enable a handful of British troops to
rule the country. The failure of the London
Round Table Conference is being followed by a
great intensification of revolutionary activity in
India. Over 50,000 "politicals" are in jail. The
newly-organized Communist party consolidates
itself and strengthens its position. Great strikes,
militant peasant movements, etc., which sharpen
to the point of armed clashes with the government,
are the order of the day in India. And the revo-
lutionary blaze will spread, despite the announced
policy of the "Socialist" Ramsay MacDonald's gov-
ernment to "make a desert out of India." British
imperialism and Indian capitalism have nothing to
offer the Indian workers and peasants but starva-
tion; and the inevitable reply of the latter will be
revolution.

In Indo-China, controlled by French imperial-
ism, a similar revolutionary foment exists. De-
spite terrific repression by French troops, there is
a growing wave of strikes, mutinies, seizures of
food supplies and local governments, leading to
armed conflicts and guerilla warfare. In the
North, where the influence of the Chinese revo-
lution is strong, there has been the formation of
local Soviets. This deepening revolutionary move-
ment is mainly under the leadership of the Com-
munist party.

In Latin America there is also to be seen the

62 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

growing revolutionary foment common to all co-
lonial and semi-colonial countries, although not yet
in such acute form as in Asia. The conditions of
the workers and peasants, in the deep industrial
and agrarian crises, go from bad to worse. A
growth of revolutionary spirit is everywhere evi-
dent. During the past three years many govern-
ments in South America have been overthrown by
coups d'etat. While these "palace revolutions"
were largely engineered by American and British
imperialism in their struggles against each other,
they nevertheless had as a background the discon-
tent of the masses. This discontent, by under-
mining the strength and prestige of the existing
governments, made it easy for rival imperialist
agents to overthrow them. In recent months, how-
ever, the struggles in Latin America assume a more
revolutionary character. The working class and
radicalized peasantry are developing real mass
movements. The Communist parties are becoming
more and more the leaders. This development of
revolutionary struggle in Latin America is exem-
plified, among other events, by the Chilean Navy
mutiny and general strike, the Peruvian general
strikes and armed struggles, the big Cuban strikes
and the revolutionary struggles in Salvador. In
the latter upheaval, for the first time in the West-
ern Hemisphere, local Soviets were established.
We may expect further and still more important

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 63

revolutionary developments in Latin America in
the near future.

The Revolutionary Perspective

THE GENERAL capitalist crisis heads inevitably, but
not at the same speed in all countries, towards the
revolutionary overthrow of the world capitalist
system. To the American with a bourgeois out-
look, such a perspective will seem remote indeed.
The American capitalism that he comes in contact
with appears strong and no revolutionary danger
seems to loom from the toiling masses. But the
perspective of revolution in general and in the
United States in particular cannot be determined
simply upon the basis of the present situation in
this country. American capitalism is part of the
world capitalist system, subject to its general laws
and bound up with its fate. This is the first point
to be borne in mind.

The second is Lenin's theory of the "weakest
link." The world capitalist system, as Marx has
taught us, is not of uniform strength in all its parts.
Hence, because of its uneven development in point
of time, extent, etc., in the several countries, it is
like a chain of stronger and weaker links. The
revolution advances, not by breaking the chain si-
multaneously everywhere, but by beginning the
break at the weakest links. Old Russia was such a

64. TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

weak link and the Russian revolution was such a
break.

The capitalist chain, with the progress of the
general capitalist crisis, is becoming full of weak
links. The entire chain is weakening. As we
have seen, among the especially weak links are
Germany, Spain, Poland, China, India, etc. So
far has the capitalist crisis developed in these
countries that the toiling masses may make a
revolutionary break through at any time, with
disastrous results upon the whole chain. Such
revolutionary breaks may come either as an ac-
companiment of imperialist war, or by the ma-
turing gradually of the inner contradictions of
capitalism in a given country, culminating in a
struggle for power by the workers and toiling
masses. And world capitalism is faced with im-
minent danger from both these directions, which
are, of course, intimately related to each other.

The revolutionary danger to the capitalist sys-
tem from the developing war situation is acute and
menacing. If and when the imperialist powers
launch a great war among themselves we may be
sure that in many countries the workers and
peasants, following the famous strategy of Lenin
and under the leadership of the Communist Inter-
national, will transform the imperialist war into
a civil war against the capitalist system. The
World War of 1914-18 resulted in the formation

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 65

of the first Soviet Republic; another great war
can well produce a Soviet Europe.

Capitalism will run no less a danger for its
existence when it launches its eventual attack upon
the Soviet Union. The Japanese were astounded
at the brave resistance put up by the half -armed
Chinese soldiers in Shanghai, fighting to defend
their country from imperialist invasion. And the
capitalist powers that attack the Soviet Union will
be doubly and fatally surprised when they go
against the Red Army. They will learn that their
drafted masses of workers and peasants will have
no taste to fight their Russian brothers; they will
find out also that revolutionary soldiers fighting
for Socialism are worth many times their number
of toiler soldiers pressed into the service of capi-
talism. The capitalists will learn, finally, that
they will have to face their aroused workers at
home, for the defense of the Soviet Union will
be carried out not only by the Red Army but by
the militant working class all over the world. And
the way this job will be done will bode ill for capi-
talism.

But the development of the revolution does not
depend upon the initiation of imperialist war. As
we have remarked, it also grows out of the sharp-
ening of the economic and eventually political
crisis within the given countries. This revolution-
ary process now goes ahead on a world scale with
the deepening of the general crisis of capitalism.

66 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

We have seen how rapidly the revolution ap-
proaches in this way in Germany and other
countries.

The proletarian revolution in Germany would
be a deadly blow to the whole capitalist system
throughout the world. Such a revolution would
in all probability draw with it Poland and other
countries on the Russian border. Thus, with the
U.S.S.R., there would be created a gigantic Soviet
bloc. This great Soviet Union, supported by the
growing revolutionary movement in the remaining
capitalist countries, would be well able to defend
itself from the inevitable military attacks of the
capitalist imperialists. More than that, it would
certainly be in a dominant world position as against
the decadent capitalist system. The center of
gravity in the world relation of class forces would
be shifted definitely on the side of the revolution.
These far-reaching possibilities are now, with the
sharpening of the crisis in Germany, already within
the scope of practical political perspectives.

When the situation is thus looked at from the
Marxist-Leninist conception of capitalism as a
world economy, when it is realized that the capital-
ist system is like a chain of stronger and weaker
links, and when it is seen how imminent a revolu-
tionary break becomes in some of these links, and
how disastrous to world capitalism such a break
would be, then the perspective for the American
revolution looms up in a quite different manner

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 67

than though we kept our eyes fastened solely upon
the immediate situation in this country. Ameri-
can capitalism, like capitalism in other countries,
is travelling the same road to revolution. The
chronological order of the United States' entry
into the developing revolution is, as yet, a matter of
speculation; but it would be sheer assumption to
conclude that because this is the strongest capi-
talist country, it will be the last to go into revo-
lution. One day, despite the disbelief of the
capitalists and of their still more cynical Social
Fascist lackeys, the American workers will demon-
strate that they, like the Russians, have the intelli-
gence, courage and organization to carry through
the revolution. The American capitalist class,
like that of other countries, is living on the brink
of a volcano which, sooner than it dreams, is going
to explode. George Bernard Shaw is right: the
time will surely come when the victorious toilers
will build a monument to Lenin in New York.

It is upon the background of this growing gen-
eral crisis of capitalism that the present economic
crisis develops. That is why it is of such un-
precedented scope, depth and duration. Those
who compare the prevailing crisis with the cycli-
cal crises of the pre-war period are deluding them-
selves, living in a realm of false hopes. The
pre-war economic crises developed during the
period of the upward trend of capitalism ; the pres-
ent one, although retaining the cyclical character,

68 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

occurs during the decline of capitalism. The
former liquidated themselves into wider circles of
capitalist growth; the latter leads to deepening
crisis and decay.

In view of all this, the questions arise: can the
capitalists secure even a temporary respite from
the onward march of the revolution by a revival of
industry ? Is the present one the last crisis of
capitalism ? In answering these questions there
must be borne in mind the considerations that,
first, the present economic crisis is of a cyclical
character, and, second, the question of the relation
of forces between the working class and the capi-
talist class, with the possibility of breaks at weak
links in the capitalist chain where the working class
takes the revolutionary path. Where there is no
strong revolutionary movement the capitalists will
find a way out at the expense of the toiling masses ;
that is, the economic crisis, following the laws of
cyclical crises, will eventually wear itself out by
reducing production, slashing prices and wages and
drastically reducing the living standards of the
masses.

But that such a turn will come soon or extend
far is doubtful. Already, as we have seen, in the
deepening general capitalist crisis, whole sections
of the capitalist economy have fallen into more or
less chronic paralysis, and the tendency is for this
paralysis to spread. The economic crises become

THE DECLINE OF CAPITALISM 69

more frequent, more widespread and more lasting.
Varga points out, in illustrating the severity of
the present crisis, that contrary to all previous
experience: "so far there has been in general no
diminution of visible (world) stocks; nay, some
commodities even having increased in this re-
spect."28 Any recovery, therefore, that may be
registered from the present economic crisis can,
at most, be only very partial and temporary in
character. It must soon be followed by another
crash still more far-reaching and devastating to the
capitalist system.

Capitalism is doomed. The capitalist system of
private ownership of industry and land, produc-
tion for profit, and exploitation of the workers is
reaching the end of its course. It has outlived its
historic mission. In its earlier stages capitalism
was a progressive system; it constituted an ad-
vance over feudalism, which preceded it. Under
capitalism there has been built an industrial sys-
tem, at least in the imperialist countries ; industrial
technique has been developed; the proletariat has
been created and disciplined. But even the lim-
ited progress that capitalism has accomplished for
humanity has been achieved at the cost of incred-
ible misery, poverty, ignorance and slaughter of
the working class.

Capitalism has created the objective conditions
for Socialism. But it can go no further. It can-

28 International Press Correspondence, Mar. 10, 1932.

70 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

not carry society to higher stages of development,
to Socialism and Communism; it has become an
obstacle in the upward path of humanity, a means
of condemning hundreds of millions of people to
mass starvation and death. History will soon
sweep aside this obsolete system. Capitalism has
provided its own executioners and grave diggers,
the proletariat. The workers and peasants of the
world are getting ready for their great social task
of abolishing capitalism and establishing Social-
ism. They are freeing themselves from the illu-
sion that capitalism provides the way to prosperity;
they are gradually breaking the leadership of the
MacDonalds, Gandhis, and other similar mislead-
ers; under the banner of the Communist Interna-
tional they are securing revolutionary organization
and program. In due season they will break
through the Social Fascist and Fascist trickery and
violence with which decadent capitalism sustains
itself. World capitalist society is heading irre-
sistibly towards the proletarian revolution.

CHAPTER II

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM

Now LET us turn away from the decaying, declin-
ing capitalist system, with its mounting mass
misery, exploitation, war and Fascist terrorism,
and look at the new rising system of Socialism in
the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. No
longer is Socialism, which is the first stage of
Communism, only a theory; no longer is it simply
the aspiration of an oppressed working class.
Now it is a living, growing reality. Operating
simultaneously in the world with capitalism, it is
showing in the everyday demonstration of life its
immense superiority in every field over the obso-
lete capitalist system. The very existence of the
Soviet Union has a profoundly revolutionizing
effect upon the working class. It is the growing
hope and strong leader of a working world pre-
paring to strike off the shackles of the murderous
capitalist system.

The workers and peasants of the Soviet Union
have overthrown the capitalist State and have set
up their Soviet government. They have abolished

capitalist ownership of industry and land and are

71

72 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

building a great system of socialized industry and
agriculture. They have done away completely
with all exploitation of the toiling masses by own-
ing, ruling classes. These fundamental political
and economic measures are the substance of the
revolution. They solve the many contradictions
of capitalism and they open the door to an era of
general prosperity, freedom and cultural advance
hitherto completely unknown to the world.

In the Soviet Union, where the economic and
political foundations of Socialism have been laid,
production is carried on for the social good, not for
the profit of an exploiting class. What deter-
mines the character and volume of production is
not whether capitalists can sell it at a profit for
themselves in a clogged market, but the needs of
the masses of people. Socialism thus liquidates
the basic contradiction — that is, the production of
social necessities for private profit — out of
which originates all the miseries and chaos of capi-
talism. Socialism thus revolutionizes the aim of
production from production for profitable sale to
production for social use. In so doing it frees
humanity from the narrow limits of capitalist
economy and embarks upon a totally new era of
social development.

This social advance is made in an orderly and
intelligent way. Socialism abolishes the chaos and
anarchy of capitalist production and social organ-
ization; it does away with the dog-eat-dog com-

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 73

petition of capitalist industry, breeder of industrial
crises and war. It sets up instead a planned sys-
tem of economy in harmony with the national and
international character of modern industry and
social relationships. Only under Socialism, with
its great nationalized industries and collectivized
agriculture, is such a scientific planned economy
possible and inevitable.

In the Soviet Union this systematic advance on
every social front is proceeding under the famous
Five- Year Plan. In a world thrown into deepen-
ing disorder and demoralization by its growing
general crisis, the superiority of the system of
planned Socialist economy stands out like a great
mountain. Even the capitalists themselves are
compelled to recognize it and they try vainly to
adapt it to the capitalist system. The correspond-
ent of the New York Times only voices an almost
universal opinion when he says: "The Soviet
leaders know precisely what they want and are
doing it, in sharp contrast to the rest of the world
where leadership seems to be a lost art."

The Five- Year Plan constitutes a gigantic mobi-
lization of the social forces of a great nation for an
organized general forward movement. It covers
the most diverse phases of social activity, stimulat-
ing them all into expansion and systematic de-
velopment. Ilin says of it :

"The Five- Year Plan is a project: not of one factory,
but of two thousand four hundred factories. And not

74 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

only of factories, but also of cities, of electric stations, of
bridges, of ships, of railroads, of mines, of state farms,
of rural communes, of schools, of our libraries. It is a
project for the rebuilding of our whole country, and was
prepared, not by one man or by two men, but by thou-
sands of trained persons. To the work of building came
not tens, but millions of workers. All of us will help to
build the Five- Year Plan." 1

The Five- Year Plan deals with industry, agri-
culture and the transportation and communica-
tion systems, calculating the resources of these
branches of economy, and providing for their de-
velopment in every direction. It deals with the
questions of housing, with the building of hospitals,
etc. It provides for the maximum production and
distribution of foodstuffs, expanding the new food
industries in every part of the country. It figures
out the number of workers required for production
and plans their mobilization. It determines the
total wage funds, including those for the cultural
needs of the workers, for social insurance, etc. It
makes provision for an organized development of
science backed by the resources of the government.
It calculates the national income and bases its
whole program thereon. Besides the general Five-
Year Plan, or rather within the framework of it,
every city and every factory also has its own plan
of organized work and development. The great
Five- Year Plan is not simply an expedient for the

i The New Russian Primer, p. 5.

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 75

present building of the Soviet economy; it repre-
sents the basic, planned method native to Socialist
society and foreseen by Marx two generations ago.
Planned economy is one of the great contributions
of Socialism to humanity.

Flourishing Bolshevik Industries

IN THE Soviet Union there is taking place an
unparalleled growth in production. As Louis
Fischer says : "The Soviet frontier is like a charmed
circle which the world economic crisis cannot
cross. While banks crash, while production falls
and trade languishes abroad, the Soviet Union
continues in an orgy of construction and national
development. The scale and speed of its progress
are unprecedented." 2 This huge and rapid de-
velopment, this immunity from the devastating
world economic crisis, is possible because Socialism
by its very nature provides the basis for a steady
and enormous expansion of the productive forces.
Capitalism, as we have seen, robs the toilers of
a large share of what they produce. This cripples
their purchasing power, making the markets lag
behind the more rapidly expanding productive
forces, and thereby causing over-production and
economic crisis. It also, finally, puts positive re-
strictions upon the development of the productive
forces themselves.

2 The Nation, Nov. 25, 1931.

76 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

But under Socialism there is no exploitation and
the masses as a whole get the full value of what
they produce — after the deduction, of course, of
what is necessary for the maintenance of the gov-
ernment and the further extension of industry —
consequently, their purchasing power cannot fall
behind production, but, on the contrary, tends con-
stantly to stimulate it by the ever-increasing de-
mand due to the rising standards of living. There
can be no clogging of the social economy with
unsaleable surpluses of commodities. The way is
wide open for continuous industrial growth. The
economic crisis is a capitalist thing foreign to So-
cialist society. The experience in the U.S.S.R.
proves this beyond question. Not even the fact
that the Soviet Union has to trade with capitalist
countries, and therefore feels the heavy downpull
of their sagging industries and declining prices,
has been able to disrupt its fundamentally sound
Socialist economy.

The existence in the Soviet Union of this con-
stant and huge impulse for the development of the
productive forces explains why it has no unemploy-
ment and why its industries are developing at a
pace totally unequalled in the whole world history
of industry. Stalin thus indicates the fundamental
superiority of Socialism over capitalism in the de-
velopment of the productive forces:

"Here in the U.S.S.R., the growth of consumption
(purchasing capacity) of the masses constantly outruns

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 77

the growth of production and stimulates it, while there,
under the capitalists, on the contrary, the growth of con-
sumption of the masses (purchasing capacity) never keeps
pace with the growth of production and constantly lags
behind it, again and again condemning production to
crises." 3

When the Soviet government launched the Five-
Year Plan, which proposed to triple pre-war
industrial production and to make huge advances
on every social front, it was greeted with a world
chorus of ridicule by the capitalists and their re-
tainers. It was one grand laughing stock. "The
Bolsheviks," the argument went, "are losing their
grip upon the masses, so now, to hold on a bit
longer, they come forward with this fantastic
project." Especially the Social Democrats dis-
tinguished themselves in "proving" the "absurdity"
of the Five- Year Plan. Kramer, President of the
Union of German Industrialists, typically ex-
pressed capitalist world opinion when he said : "If
the Five- Year Plan could be realized in 50 years,
it would be a magnificent achievement. But that
is Utopian."

The Russian Communist Party replied to this
barrage of ridicule and cynicism by putting out the
slogan, "The Five-Year Plan in Four Years," and
mobilized all possible forces to achieve this her-
culean task. At the end of the third, "decisive"
year, Dec., 1931, the record stood, in percentages

s Speech at XVI Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union.

78 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

of accomplishment yearly of the Plan's proposed
quotas of industrial output: 1929 — 106%, 1930
— 107%, 1931 — 113%. Hence, taking into ac-
count the progress in agriculture and all other
factors, and in spite of a lag in several industries
"(coal mining, metal, railroads, etc.) in 1931,
chiefly because of transportation difficulties, Kub-
yshev, President of the State Planning Commis-
sion, could correctly say: "The 36% increase (for
1932) of the output of planned industry means
the complete realization of the proposals of the
Five- Year Plan in 1932" — that is, in four years.
The "absurd" and "fantastic" is being accom-
plished.

Ossinsky, a Russian economist, says: "Before
us is one more year of Bolshevik attack, of decisive
struggle for the Socialist industrialization of the
country. When we shall sum up next year what has
been done, out of the removed scaffoldings, on the
cleared building sites, there will arise before your
eyes, in harmonious perspective, the mighty edi-
fice of the completed Five- Year Plan — a new
Socialist country, reconstructed by the indomitable
will and inexhaustible strength of the proletariat,
headed by its Bolshevist vanguard."

In 1932, as in the past three years, the main
stress is being laid upon the heavy industries —
metal, coal, chemicals, engineering, transport, etc.
Also the utmost attention will be paid to consoli-
dating the gains made, by the application of

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 79

Stalin's celebrated "six points" for the organization
of the labor supply, the reorganization of the wage
scales, the establishment of greater personal re-
sponsibility, the creation of a working class techni-
cal intelligentsia, better working relations with the
old bourgeois specialists and better accountancy
systems. Reporting on the first three months of
1932, the New York Times Moscow correspond-
ent states (Mar. 21) : "Preliminary figures for
the first quarter produced yesterday at a meeting
of the State Planning Commission show a startling
advance over the same period last year."

"Japan, westernizing and industrializing itself
50 years ago, was doing child's play compared to
what the Soviet Union is doing today," says
Frazier Hunt.4 Already, almost overnight, the
U.S.S.R has become an industrial country. In
1931 the value of the products of industry exceeded
those of agriculture, as 60 to 40. And that the
development is going into the direction of Social-
ism, (which the Social Democrats also said was
impossible) , is decisively shown by the fact that the
output of the Socialist sector of the general econ-
omy, including agriculture, amounted in 1931 to
91% of all production, as against 52% in 1928.

Not only is the output of industry being in-
creased, but the industrial base also constantly
broadens. A solid foundation of heavy industry
has already been laid, including the big tractor,

York American, Jan. 14, 1930.

80 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

automobile, chemical, electro-technical and other
industries, which have been built from the ground
up. Daily new products, never before made in the
U.S.S.R., are being turned out, from watches and
cameras to gigantic blooming mills and great elec-
trical machines. This year there will be produced
$500,000,000 worth of commodities formerly im-
ported. A year ago the construction of a turbo-
generator of 10,000 kilowatts was hailed as a great
victory; now several of 77,000 kilowatts are being
built. The U.S.S.R. is rapidly becoming a great
industrial unit practically independent economi-
cally of the capitalist world.

The great speed with which this industrial de-
velopment is taking place is quite without prece-
dent. Russian industrial production leaps ahead
at an average increase of 22% to 25% per year;
whereas the best average achieved by the United
States, from 1870 to 1890, was 8.3%. The New
York Herald, of Jan., 1930 (Paris edition), says:
"The Plan aims to accomplish in half a decade an
amount of industrialization which other nations —
even one so richly endowed by nature as the United
States — took a generation or two to achieve."
Brand says : "There was a time when Europe was
astounded at American speed, at the rapid growth
of towns, construction of large enterprises and
skyscrapers. The U.S.S.R. has left American
speed behind." E. Lyons says in Current His-

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 81

tory, Nov., 1931: "The colossal economic program
on which the Soviet government is now engaged
amounts to the telescoping of half a century of
progress into a decade or less."

In 1931 capital investment in Russian heavy in-
dustry equalled that of the three previous years;
there was a 40% increase in the production of
electric power; 518 new factories of all kinds were
opened. The value of electrical products in 1930
was 580,000,000 rubles, in 1931 it amounted to
1,000,000,000, and in 1932 it will be 1,850,000,000.5
In 1931 the food industries increased 36% over
1930. In 1932 the total new capital investment
in all spheres will increase from 16 billion to 21^
billion rubles. The State budget will advance
from 20% billion in 1931 to 27% billion in 1932,
with a surplus of 500,000,000 rubles, as compared
with the gigantic government deficits in the
capitalist countries. The value of industrial pro-
duction since 1929 has increased 50%. Many
industries and factories (oil, tractors, machine-
building, electro-technical, etc.) have completed
the "impossible" Five- Year Plan in two to three
years. Leningrad, the greatest of all Russian in-
dustrial cities, had already finished the Five- Year
Plan at the end of 1931. In three years the pro-
ductivity of labor in the U.S.S.R. has increased
34%. On many jobs (Dnieperstroy, Stalingrad,

5 A ruble is worth approximately 51 cents.

82 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

etc.) world construction records were broken,
etc., etc.6

As against these great achievements, the Com-
munists, with dynamic "self-criticism," point out
many shortcomings. Thus Molotov says: "We
did not fulfill our estimate for the raising of the
productivity of labor in industry. . . We have also
not carried out the proposals of the Five- Year Plan
in regard to increasing the harvest yields. . . We
have not fulfilled the tasks in regard to the recon-
struction of transport, in particular of railroad
transport." These weak spots are now the center
of special attack.

What the present tremendous growth of Rus-
sian industry means over a period of years is ex-
pressed by Pravda, Feb. 2, 1932 :

Annual Production

1925 1931

Coal 17,600,000 (tons) 56,000,000

Coke 1,600,000 " 6,700,000

Oil 7,200,000 " 22,300,000

Peat 2,500,000 " 9,400,000

Pig Iron 1,500,000 " 4,900,000

Steel 2,100,000 " 5,300,000

Copper 12,000 " 48,800

Cement 872,000 " 3,300,000

Superphosphates 67,800 " 521,000
Machine construction 730,000,000 (rubles) 5,700,000,000

Tractors 469 (units) 41,200
Electrical power 3 billion (kwhrs.) lO^ billion

e The daily press just announces, March 30th, that the great
Dnieperstroy dam has been completed six months ahead of schedule.

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 83

This terrific speed is the famous "Bolshevik
tempo" of development. It is made possible by
the sound economics of the Socialist system, which
makes for a rapid growth of the productive forces,
by the determination of the workers to build So-
cialism (and thus prosperity) as quickly as pos-
sible, by the pressure of the swiftly rising living
standards and demands of the toilers, by the revo-
lutionary enthusiasm of the masses in building the
industries, by the burning necessity to render the
U.S.S.R. economically independent of the capital-
ist world at the earliest possible period and to
enable it to defend itself against the developing
capitalist war attack, by the determination to show
the workers of the world the superiority of Social-
ism over capitalism.

One of the basic factors, as we have indicated,
in the stormy advance of Russian industry is the
blazing enthusiasm of the workers. They have
this enthusiasm because they realize they are build-
ing the great industrial system for their own bene-
fit, not for a small clique of capitalist exploiters.
Thus they have developed the celebrated "Social-
ist competition," by which factory and factory,
industry and industry, city and city, compete with
each other in comradely rivalry to carry through
sooner and better their production plans. Besides,
the well-established plants "lend" large numbers of
their better-trained workers to localities where mass
production is just being introduced. They also

84 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

have their "shock brigades" of workers to push for-
ward difficult tasks, and "self-control" committees
to check up on the work. There are 200,000 shock
brigades, with 3,500,000 worker members, and a
great mass of the self-control committees. The
workers submit their "counter-plans" of production
against those formulated by the industry heads.
Examples: In the "Electric Apparat" plant in
Leningrad the management planned a 72,000,000
ruble output for this year, whereupon the workers
presented their counter-plan to increase the output
to 94,500,000 rubles ; the great Saratov agricultural
machine plant was officially scheduled to begin
operations by Jan. 1, 1932, but the workers'
counter-plan called for a production of 200 ma-
chines daily by that date.

Shock brigades, self-control committees and So-
cialist competition lead to great improvements in
industrial technique and labor efficiency. Ruben-
stein says: "The number of suggestions and
inventions by workers has increased one-hundred-
fold during the past year. Frequently one finds
factories receiving thousands of suggestions of the
workers in the course of the year." 7 How futile
are the American B. & O. plan, "pep talk" methods
in comparison. The young workers are the prime
movers and organizers of this great shock-brigade,
Socialist-competition, self-control movement the

7 Science at the Crossroads, p. 20.

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 85

like of which is totally unknown in capitalist coun-
tries.

Swift though the present speed of development
in the U.S.S.R. may be, the Russians would and
could go still faster. Were credits available they
would double or triple their orders for machinery in
the capitalist countries. But most of these coun-
tries, especially the United States, systematically
place hindrances in the way of such credits, hoping
thereby to wreck the Five- Year Plan, or at least to
slow down the, to them, very dangerous speed of
Russian industrial growth. American imperial-
ism, to the glee of Matthew Woll and Hamilton
Fish, prefers to shut down its plants and throw the
workers out on the streets to starve than to let
them work on Russian industrial orders.

The new Russian industries are being built upon
a scientific basis, not haphazard as in capitalist
countries. The railroads, with great feeder lines
of auto-trucks, canals, etc., are being built by plan,
not with the endless waste, duplication and general
anarchy to be found, for example, in the United
States. The steel mills, chemical plants, etc., are
constructed according to the last word in industrial
technique, located at the most strategic points and
coordinated with each other and with the whole in-
dustrial system. It is all one vast industrial ma-
chine, all the parts of which fit into and work with
each other.

Naturally, the plants and the industrialization as

86 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

a whole are on an immense scale. No combination
of capitalists anywhere could organize such gigan-
tic projects. This can be done only by a Socialist
State. With only one or two exceptions, the great
plants here cited are by far the largest in the world.
A few of the new industrial giants, either just fin-
ished or in course of construction, are: the well-
known Stalingrad, Leningrad and Kharkov tractor
plants, with a capacity of 100,000 tractors yearly;
the great Amo and Nizhni-Novgorod automotive
plants, the latter exceeded in size only by the Ford
River Rouge plant; the huge power plant and in-
dustrial combine on the Dnieper, costing 840,000,-
000 rubles and employing 35,000 builders; the
gigantic Volga and Angara river hydro-electric
plants and industrial combines, both larger than
any in the world, the Volga plant, starting in 1932,
to cost 1,200,000,000 rubles, and its combine of
local copper, chemical, aluminum, etc., plants to
cost 3,000,000,000 rubles, or about as much as all
the plants together of the United States Steel Cor-
poration; the monster steel mills on a similar scale
at Magnitogorsk, Kuznetz, Zaporozhie, Noginsk,
etc. ; the great Kamensk-Sinarsk plant alone to have
a capacity of 2,000,000 tons of pig iron yearly.
The gigantic Novo-Sibirsk agricultural machine
plants — two years ago there were only two com-
bined harvesting machines in all Siberia, now this
plant will build 15,000 annually, in addition to
35?000 tractor seed drills, 30,000 tractor hay mow-

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 87

ers, etc.; the new Kashira electric locomotive
works, capacity 1600 large American-type engines
yearly; the Yaroslavl rubber-asbestos combine, un-
equalled in size anywhere, employing 22,000 work-
ers and operating upon local- grown rubber (the
newly- found "towsagis") ; the vast new textile
combine in Siberia; the monster electrical machine
building combine in the Urals, to begin early in
1932 and to have an output valued at 2,000,000,000
rubles yearly; the monster Leningrad clothing fac-
tory with 18,000 workers, the great copper mining
and reduction plant, larger than any in the United
States, near Lake Balkash, to turn out 400,000
tons of copper annually, or more than eight times
as much as the total Soviet copper production for
1931, etc., etc.

Just a few further details in this wholly un-
paralleled industrialization are the building of a
modern national meat packing industry, the set-
ting up of the most powerful radio station in the
world, the construction of the "Turk-Sib" railroad,
the digging of the Volga-Don and Volga-Moscow
canals, the latter to cost 100,000,000 rubles, the
opening of 10,000 new retail stores in 1932, the
completion of 138 airlines with 100,000 miles of
airways by the end of 1932, the Moscow subway,
to cost nearly a billion rubles, the great Palace of
Soviets, 6,000 new motion picture installations,
etc., etc.

On such a scale and with such speed and planful-

88 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

ness, are the Russian workers building their in-
dustries. And the joke of it all is that only a year
or two ago the Communists were universally con-
demned by capitalist wiseacres as hopeless tyros
industrially. Now they are teaching the whole
world an entirely new perspective of industrial
possibilities.

The Revolution in Agriculture

IF SOCIALISM proceeds with great speed in indus-
try, it goes still faster in agriculture. The vast
development of the productive forces and the re-
organization generally that is taking place with
almost lightning speed in Russian agriculture is
something altogether new in the world. During
the 30 days from Jan. 20 to Feb. 20, 1930, one-
third of all the peasants entered the collective
farms in the monster organization campaign, rais-
ing the total of collectivized homesteads from
4,300,000 to 14,000,000 at one stroke. Anna
Louise Strong thus describes this tremendous
movement: "Can one give a smooth account of an
earthquake ? The storm of collectivization that I
found on the Lower Volga in late November, 1929,
was as elemental as an earthquake, as a tidal wave,
as a whirlwind." 8

The Five- Year Plan was completed in two years
in the collectivized farms, in three years in the

s The Soviets Conquer Wheat, p. 24.

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 89

State farms. The Plan called for 20% of all
farms to be collectivized by the end of 1933; al-
ready there are 62% and this year will raise it to
75%, which will practically complete the most im-
portant districts. There were 1,000,000 collec-
tivized farms in 1929, now there are 22,000,000
organized into 200,000 collectives; there were 143
State farms in 1930, now there are 4,000, or far
in excess of the quota called for by the Five- Year
Plan. Duranty says (N. Y. Times, Jan. 2, 1932)
that nine-tenths of the chief grain centers are al-
ready collectivized.

These new farms are huge in size. In 1927 the
average size of Russian farms was 11 acres, now
it is 973. The State farms range as large as 100,-
000 to 200,000 acres; the collectives are still more
gigantic, some running as great as 500,000 acres
of cultivated land, exceeding thus in size by four
or five times the biggest farms in any other coun-
try in the world. Whole districts have become
practically single farms, worked in common by the
organized farmers.

Russian farming is fairly leaping ahead from a
condition of almost medieval primitiveness to the
most advanced in the world. In many parts of
the Soviet Union farming methods of 2,000 years
ago were still in use up till the great drive for col-
lectivization. Even close to Moscow things were
not much better. Says A. L. Strong: "In the
district of Koshira, only three hours by rail from

90 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

Moscow, a survey made in 1930 of farm equipment
showed a population of 62,000 souls and some
6,200 plows, of which 2,659 were of the home-made
wooden style." But so swift is the pace of develop-
ment that Kalinin could say on Mar. 6, 1931, at
the Sixth Congress of Soviets: "In industry great
may be the advance in comparison with our back-
ward past, we are still only striving to overtake
the technical development of more advanced coun-
tries. But in farming we are leaders on a new
road. Here we go before all nations"

The farms are being rapidly and scientifically
mechanized. Lenin said: "If 100,000 first class
tractors could be produced and supplied with gaso-
line and tractorists tomorrow (and you know that
this is still but a fantasy) , the middle peasant would
say: 'Yes, I am for the commune,' that is, for
Communism." Well, the tractors are now in the
fields, 150,000 of them, and the middle peasants
are practically won for Socialism, as Lenin fore-
saw. One of the revolutionary features of the
new mechanization is the "tractor stations."
These are centers that furnish machinery and re-
pairs, instruction, recreation, etc., to the peasants.
In Dec., 1931, there were 1400 of them; in 1932,
1700 more are being organized, thus covering the
entire country with a network of farm machine
local centers, radiation points of all that is needed
to build the new farming and Socialism. With this
mechanization goes a fundamental improvement of

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 91

methods in all directions, the development of scien-
tific fertilization, the building of great irrigation
projects, the beginning of the electrification in
farming, etc. They are now even sowing wheat
by airplane.

Already, although the general movement is just
getting under way, vast improvements are to be
registered in farming results. In three years there
has been a 21% increase in the total cultivated
area. The cotton acreage now amounts to three
times pre-war, and other industrial crops show ac-
cordingly. Despite a still great lack of machinery
and fertilizer, the yield on the collectives runs from
25% to 50% better than on the old individual
farms. The year 1931 was a drought period; for-
merly it would have produced a famine, but with
collectivized farming the general output equalled
the previous year.

In 1932 there will be a further stimulation of
the whole movement. The total new capital in-
vestment in the Socialist sector of agriculture will
be 4,360,000,000 rubles instead of the 3,600,000,000
in 1931. There will be increases of the State
cattle ranches of 40%, State piggeries 200%, State
sheep ranches 40%, cotton sowing 14%, sugar
beets 13%, spring wheat 5%, and a myriad of
other developments of agricultural production.
The world agrarian crisis does not bear down upon
the Soviet Union; while in other countries they
are burning coffee, wheat, etc., and the very farm-

92 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

ers themselves are starving, in the U.S.S.R. every
effort is being made to increase production, and
the conditions of the rural population rapidly im-
prove.

The revolution in Russian agriculture is of pro-
found economic, political and social significance.
The farmers are being proletarianized and revolu-
tionized. The collectivized farms lay a solid So-
cialist basis in the country. The remnants of
competitive, individualist farming are being liqui-
dated, and the rich kulaks with them. The farms
are being mechanized and industrialized, the unity
of city and country established. The workers in
the cities and on the farms are being knitted into
one solid working class. Light and prosperity are
being brought into the dark Russian villages. The
whole social basis of the Soviet government is being
enormously strengthened. The winning of the
"fundamentally anti- Socialist" middle peasants to
Socialism has been practically accomplished.

Outstripping the Capitalist Countries

WHEN Lenin called upon the Russian workers to
"overtake and outstrip the most advanced capitalist
countries" industrially, this historic appeal was
greeted with hilarious guffaws all over the capitalist
world, especially in Social-Democratic circles.
How could the "impractical" Bolsheviks ever
do that ? Preposterous ! But now capitalism's

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 93

laugh is on the other side of its face. It is com-
pelled to see that the Soviet Union, advancing with
giant strides, is fairly running past the industrially
stagnant and declining capitalist countries.

"In the U.S.S.R.," says Premier Molotov, "24
new blast furnaces were started in 1931, while 29
were closed down in the United States from Janu-
ary to September of the same year." "In the
U.S.S.R.," states Brand, "we are building work-
shops, in Europe and the United States they are
closing them down; the U.S.S.R. is launching new
ships, in Hamburg, London and New York ships
are being converted into scrap iron." In 1931,
while the Soviet Union was advancing its general
industrial production 21%, that of the capitalist
countries declined on an average of 25%. Since
1928 Russian industrial production has increased
86%, and that of the capitalist world has fallen
29%.9 While the national income of the U.S.S.R.
increased 14% in 1931, the general drop in capital-
ist countries ran from 15% to 20%.

In the production of oil the Soviet Union now
stands second among the nations, in coal mining
and heavy machine building fourth. In 1927, it
stood seventh in the production of electrical equip-
ment; in 1931 fourth, in 1932 it will be second,
standing behind only the United States. In the
making of automobiles, 1932 will put the Soviet

9 Data from League of Nations' sources and German Economic
Institute.

94 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

Union ahead of both Germany and Italy. In the
steel industry it is overtaking one capitalist coun-
try after another; in 1929 Belgium was passed, in
1931 England was outdistanced, only three coun-
tries now being ahead of the Soviet Union in steel,
and they also are being rapidly overhauled.

In the matter of total national income the
U.S.S.R. now stands second in the world, its figure
of 38 billions for 1931 being twice that of 1913 and
exceeding the pre-crisis figures for Germany, Great
Britain and France.

In total volume of industrial production the
U.S.S.R. also occupies second place. The Eco-
nomic Review of the Soviet Union (Apr. 1, 1932)
informs us: "By August (1931) industrial pro-
duction of the Soviet Union already exceeded that
of Germany and was second only to the United
States. While in 1928 the share of the United
States in world industrial output was nearly ten
times that of the U.S.S.R., by October of last year
it was only about three times." Few, if any, of
the capitalist countries, now stricken by economic
crisis, that are being so rapidly passed by the Soviet
Union, will ever catch up with it again, even tem-
porarily.

The second Five- Year Plan, recently announced
and which will go into effect at the end of this year
when the present Five- Year Plan is completed,
provides a gigantic program of industrial and agri-
cultural development that will further advance the

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 95

position of the U.S.S.R. in world economy. The
XVII Party Conference of the C.P.S.U. says in
its resolution: "In the second Five-Year Plan the
Soviet Union will advance to the first place in
Europe in regard to technique." The purpose of
the new plan is to "transform the whole national
economy and to create the most modern technical
basis of all branches of national economy." The
first Five- Year Plan greatly frightened the capi-
talist world ; the second increases its demoralization.

The tremendous scope of the second Five- Year
Plan may be realized from the fact that it provides
for a total new capital investment of 150 billion
rubles, or about 78 billion dollars. What this
gigantic sum means in the way of development is
indicated by the comparison that it is equal to
three times the I.C.C. valuation of the total rail-
road mileage of the United States — 26 billion dol-
lars, a figure which includes one-third to one-half
of watered values.

Some of the details of the immense second Five-
Year Plan are the following: the development of
six times as much electrical power in 1937 as in
1932, extension of the machine building industry
3^/2 times, increase of coal production from 90
million tons in 1932 to 250 million in 1937, 300%
increase in the production of oil, the yearly pro-
duction of 22 million tons of pig iron, (requiring
a tempo of development twice as fast as that of the
United States and Germany in their best days),

96 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

an output of 170,000 tractors per year, the build-
ing of 30,000 kilometers of railroads, accompanied
with a complete reorganization, including the estab-
lishment of the block system, automatic couplers,
bigger locomotives and cars, new bridges, extensive
electrification, etc. The main aim will be to build
the heavy industries and power base, but the light
industries will also be developed 200% to 300%.
In agriculture similar great advances will be made,
including a large extension of the sown area (cot-
ton and flax 100%, sugar beets 200%, etc.), com-
plete collectivization of the land, complete mechan-
ization of the main branches of agriculture and the
beginnings of electrification, including the electri-
cal stimulation of plant growth, a huge increase of
livestock, a large expansion of wheat production
to insure against drought years, the construction of
automobile roads on a vast scale, etc., etc. The
Party resolution expresses "the firm conviction
that the main tasks of the second Five- Year Plan
will not only be fulfilled, but even surpassed."

The accomplishment of this stupendous plan of
development will put the U.S.S.R. within hailing
distance of the United States in the matter of in-
dustrial output. In one fundamental (not to
mention many lesser ones), that of the production
of electrical power, the Russian figure in 1937
will exceed that of the United States in 1929. En-
gineer C. A. Gill of the B. & O. Railroad, just
returned from the Soviet Union, says of the rail-

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 97

roads: "Russia is today already second only to
the United States in tonnage carried. In the next
five years she will equal this country." 10 At its
present rate of development the U.S.S.R. will be
the world's leader in industrial production within
10 years. By that time Lenin's famous slogan,
"to overtake and surpass the most advanced capi-
talist countries," will be fully realized.

Eeal Prosperity for the Toilers

BUT THE Soviet Union is not only rapidly increas-
ing its industrial and agricultural production; it
is at the same time building an industrial (and
social) system superior in structure and function
to that of capitalism. Instead of a hodge-podge
of competitive and unprogressive industry and
agriculture, it is creating a great, modern, pro-
gressive industrial-agricultural machine ; instead of
a profit-making apparatus to fatten a few while
millions starve, it is building its industries for the
benefit of the producing masses. That is why the
Soviet Union is a land of no strikes. That is why
the Russian workers and peasants are toiling so
resolutely to build their new industrial system, un-
deterred by either the appalling difficulties of an
undeveloped economy or the endless obstacles
placed in their way by the world capitalist enemy.
The growth of Socialism marks the birth of the

10 New York Times, Feb. 19, 1932.

98 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

first era of prosperity for the workers. Under
capitalism everywhere wealth piles up automat-
ically in the hands of the parasitic owners of the
industries, while the masses of actual producers
live at the bare subsistence line. But in the Social-
ist Soviet Union all this is fundamentally changed.
There production is carried on for the benefit of
those who actually work. There are no artificial
limits placed upon production by the need to sell
in a clogged market. Hence productive forces de-
velop freely and rapidly, and as production in-
creases the added output inevitably translates itself
into higher wages, shorter hours, better working
conditions, more elaborate cultural institutions,
etc., for the toilers. "There are no beggars or
lines of unemployed in Soviet streets — no rent
evictions, no ragged despair," says Duranty. One
of the most infamous and ridiculous capitalist lies
against the Soviet Union is that the Russian work-
ers are "exploited." How can they possibly be
"exploited" when there is no ruling, owning class,
no class to get a rake-off from the worker's pro-
duction ? X1

It is a revolutionary fact of first importance that
only in the Soviet Union, of all the world, are the
conditions of the toilers now being improved. In
every respect they are advancing, while in all capi-
talist countries, the United States included, the

11 A typically absurd argument against Socialism is made in The
Forum, Nov., 1931, by Andre Maurois that, "a permanent better-
ment of standards will again build up a bourgeoisie."

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 99

standards of the workers have catastrophically de-
clined, until mass starvation is a common phenome-
non. The workers everywhere, penetrating the
lies of capitalism, are beginning to understand the
significance of this rise of workers' standards under
Socialism and their decline under capitalism.
That is the reason millions of them want to go to
the Soviet Union; it explains why the working
class everywhere is more and more looking to the
Soviet Union as the guide it must follow in its
fight for freedom and prosperity.

The main task of all capitalist governments is
the suppression and exploitation of the toiling
masses; but the very reason-for-being of the revo-
lutionary Soviet government is the fundamental
improvement of the conditions of these masses.
This, characteristically, the Soviet government does
according to plan. Not only is the development
of industry and agriculture the object of the State
planning, but also the systematic improvement of
wages, hours, living and cultural conditions, etc.
Up till now, in order to lay a solid Socialist founda-
tion for real worker prosperity, the government
has had to apply every possible energy and re-
source to the development of industry. Neverthe-
less, it has been able to accomplish profound bet-
terments in the workers' conditions. Let us
briefly review some of them:

Unemployment, that terror of the capitalist
system, has no place in a Socialist system. The

100 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

consuming power of the masses keeps pace with
and outstrips their producing power. Hence,
unemployment has been wiped out in the Soviet
Union. The right to work, alien and unknown to
capitalist society, has been fully established.
While millions of hungry workers desperately
seek employment in capitalist countries, in the
Soviet Union every worker has a job. And it will
so remain. From 1922 to 1928 there was consid-
erable unemployment in the Soviet Union, despite
the steady growth of industry and increase in the
number of workers employed, this being caused by
large numbers of workers coming from the villages
to the cities. Originally, the Five-Year Plan did
not contemplate the complete elimination of un-
employment by 1932. Nevertheless, this has been
accomplished. Moreover, there is a huge shortage
of workers in every industry. The working class,
the most basic element in the productive forces of
society, either stagnant or actually declining in
numbers in capitalist countries, is rapidly on the
increase in the Soviet Union. In 1927, there were
(except agricultural) 8,866,000 workers and in
1930, 12,429,000. The last year of the Five- Year
Plan, 1933, called for a grand total of 15,800,000
workers, but this year the number has already
reached 18,700,000. In 1932 another 3 millions
will be added, raising the total to over 21 millions
or 133% of the Plan. Thus the very basis of the

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 101

revolution, the working class, is being enormously
strengthened, and that, too, by plan.

Under Socialism wages are as high as the total
economy will permit; under capitalism they are as
low as the workers can be compelled to accept.
Hence, with the rapidly expanding economy in
the U.S.S.R., wages are swiftly on the increase,
in contrast to rapid wage declines in all capitalist
countries. In the U.S.S.R. average yearly wages
(except in agriculture) were; 1927 — 729 rubles,

1930 — 956 rubles, 1931 — 1010 rubles. Calculat-
ing upon the principles of purchasing power and
socialized wages, (which include social insurance,
vacations, etc.), the wages of Russian workers are
now about double what they were before the revo-
lution. And the tempo of wage advance becomes
ever faster in the Soviet Union, as the general
economy expands, even as the rate of wage decline
increases in the industrially decaying capitalist
lands. Last year the Russian average wage in-
crease was 18%, in 1932 it is planned to be 27%.12
The final year of the Five- Year Plan called for a
total wage fund of 15,700,000,000 rubles; but in

1931 it had already reached 21,000,000,000 and in

1932 it will be 26,800,000,000, or 171% fulfillment
of the Plan. In the question of wages the prin-
ciple of "overtaking and surpassing" the capitalist
countries also applies. The Russians in this re-
is Associated Press dispatches of Mar. 31, 1932, announce a gen-
eral wage increase of 11% to 20% in all the light and heavy indus-
tries of the U.S.S.R.

102 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

spect have already passed many countries; un-
doubtedly they are even ahead of many categories
of American workers, including miners and textile
workers, and with wages advancing so rapidly in
the Soviet Union and falling so fast in all capital-
ist countries, they will soon pass the rest. In all
likelihood, considering the incomes of the working
class as a whole, the second Five- Year Plan, which
will at least double the wages of the workers, will
put the Russian workers in the lead of the whole
world.

In the question of the short working period, the
Russian workers already are in the forefront of
the world's working class. In the U.S.S.R. the
average workday is 7.02 hours, with a five-day
week, as against an average of 8.50 hours per day
in the United States, for an average 5%-day
week. In the U.S.S.R the maximum workday is
8 hours, with the 6-hour -day for the youth and
workers in dangerous and unhealthy trades
(mines, chemicals, etc.,) ; in the United States the
sky is the limit for hours, with the 10-hour day
widespread, 53% of the workers in the steel in-
dustry working 10 to 12 hours daily and 27%
working the 7-day week,13 little or no limitations
upon the hours of youth and women workers, etc.
The Five- Year Plan contemplated completing the
introduction of the 7-hour day by the end of 1933,
but this also will be accomplished in four years, at

is Labor Fact Book, p. 87.

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 103

present about 90% of the industrial workers being
upon the 7-hour day basis or less. In the capital-
ist countries, despite the huge unemployment, there
is actually a tendency to increase the length of the
working day; whereas, of course, in the Socialist
Soviet Union the working day is constantly being
cut. The second Five-Year Plan will make the
6-hour day practically universal in the Soviet
Union.

The social insurance of the Russian workers,
already the most comprehensive in the world, also
is being rapidly developed. It covers every form
of disability — sickness, accident, unemployment,
old age, child-birth, etc., etc., — and is fast reach-
ing the stage of full wages under all conditions of
disemployment. In the capitalist countries, as
part of the program of thrusting the burden of
the crisis upon the shoulders of the working class,
the workers' benefits under State social legislation
are being drastically reduced. In the Soviet
Union, of course, the reverse is the case. Even
the radical provisions of the Five-Year Plan in this
field are being greatly exceeded in accomplish-
ment; the Plan provided that the social insurance
budget for 1933 should be 1,900,000,000 rubles;
as a matter of fact, however, it had reached 2,500,-
000,000 already in 1931, and will mount to
3,400,000,000 in 1932, or about double the original
Plan figure. "Russia," says Rep. Sirovich, (Dem.
N. Y.) (New York Journal, Dec. 10, 1931), "is

104 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

the only place in the world where charity and
philanthropy have been abolished." The Russian
workers and farmers, with their elaborate social
insurance, have no need for such miserable hand-
outs.

The health and safety of the workers, in indus-
try and in social life generally, is in the very nature
of Socialism a first concern of the Soviet govern-
ment. Tremendous progress is being made in
these fields. In the same series of articles, Siro-
vich says, "Russia has a widespread and thorough
health program. The Commissariat of Health
gathers the best medical knowledge in the world
and places it free of charge at the disposal of the
Russian people." While in capitalist countries,
under the pressure of the speed-up system in in-
dustry, unemployment, low wages, undernourish-
ment, etc., accidents pile up in industry and the
health of the working class is undermined; in the
Soviet Union just the reverse tendencies are mani-
fest. The old-time plagues of cholera and typhus
are now only terrible memories; the health of the
masses is being scientifically cultivated. Industry
is being made safe and healthy. No workers in
the world have the vacations with pay, free rest
homes and sanatoria, free medical services, etc.,
that the Russian workers have. In 1929 the
Soviet government spent 54,500,000 rubles for
safety and sanitation in industry; in 1931 this work
absorbed 124,000,000 rubles, and further huge im-

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 105

provements are planned. For the general health
services, including sport, the national budget for
1932 calls for 1,737,000,000 rubles. Such figures,
of course, do not include the hundreds of millions
more spent by the local Soviets.

The housing problem in the Soviet Union is a se-
vere one, what with the heterogeneous collection of
miserable shacks left over from the Czarist regime
and the terrific growth of urban population. But
this problem is also being solved rapidly. The
national government housing program, which does
not include innumerable large local projects, in-
creases in volume from year to year: in 1926 it
amounted to 292,000,000 rubles; in 1931, 1,117,-
000,000; and in 1932 it will be 2,892,000,000.
Whole new cities are being built from the ground
up, and the old ones rebuilt, on Socialist lines.
Under the State Institute for City Planning 100
of such gigantic building projects are being
pushed. Never was planned city building car-
ried out upon such a huge scale. Such places as
Leningrad and Nizhni-Novgorod are being rebuilt
into model Socialist cities, with great systems of
schools, theatres, clubs, municipal baths, libraries,
athletic fields, factory kitchens, laundries, crema-
toriums, stadiums, hospitals, refrigeration plants,
etc. Besides, Socialist cities are also being built
in the country, the most striking of these being the
already famous "Socialist Farm City" of Filanova.
This city, to be completed by 1934, will contain a

106 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

population of 60,000, now scattered in 127 villages,
and it will have all modern facilities. The whole
district will be one great farm, the toilers living in
the city and going to their work in automobiles.
This revolutionary city is being built in a district
where the peasants are just emerging from the
darkness of the middle ages.

The improved living standards of the workers
are paralleled by similar advances in the peasants'
conditions. The whole village life is being trans-
formed. More food, better clothing, better hous-
ing, a raised standard of living generally is the
order of the day in the country. The collective
farm movement is freeing the peasants from the
hopeless drudgery of the past; it is giving them a
much greater return for their work; it brings edu-
cation and a new culture; it makes a huge saving
in labor power which is being used to rebuild and
modernize the whole life in the country. The
Russian peasants are now taking the most gigantic
and swiftest steps forward in culture and well-
being ever made in any country in the history of
the world.

The general rise in Russian living standards is
manifested by a large increase in consumption of
the more nutritious foods. The consumption of
meat, for example, has increased 25% in four
years, with a further heavy increase planned for
in 1932. The production of eggs and potatoes,
exceeded last year by 20 % to 50 % ; the produc-

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 107

tion of meat, butter, sunflower seeds and linseed by
50% to 100% ; that of poultry and tobacco 100%.
Whereas government experts in the United States
are now teaching the workers how to live on a few
cents a week, while masses of foodstuffs rot in the
warehouses, the Soviet government is bending
every effort to increase food production — which
automatically means to increase consumption. In
10 years it is planned to quadruple the present
number of cattle, sheep and hogs. The resolution
of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet
government says: "In the year 1932, the fund
allotted to goods intended for mass consumption
will be greatly increased. This fund is rising
(computed according to the retail prices of last
year) from 27,200,000,000 rubles to 35,000,000,-
000. That is to say, the retail turnover of the
Socialist sector increases 30%." What govern-
ment other than that of the U.S.S.R., would thus
plan the betterment of the toilers' conditions ?

The second Five- Year Plan will greatly accel-
erate the rise in Russian living standards. This
will be possible with the more developed industrial
base. Wages will be doubled or tripled. The six-
hour day will become almost universal. The
social insurance system will reach the stage of full
wages for every form of disability. Production
of consumption goods will be enormously increased.
Vast housing plans will be completed. The reso-
lution of the XVII conference of the Communist

108 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

Party of the Soviet Union provides: "In the light
industries and in the food industries production is
to be extended and a three-fold increase in the
standard of consumption of the population is to
be secured."

The Russian workers and peasants, it is true,
are still poor. This poverty is their heritage from
Czarism and capitalism. But with control of the
industries and the land, with capitalist exploita-
tion and robbery stopped, with rapidly developing
Socialist industries and farms, they have the solid
basis for such a prosperity as no working class in
the world has ever even remotely approached.
The rapidity with which this prosperity will de-
velop and its great depth and breadth will soon
astound the world. Capitalists everywhere under-
stand this. They sense the revolutionizing effect
it will have upon the millions of workers in their
countries who, in the growing crisis of the capi-
talist system, are falling deeper and deeper into
poverty and starvation. This is the basic reason
why the capitalists are redoubling their efforts to
develop war against the Soviet Union.

The Cultural Revolution

THE PROLETARIAN revolution ushered a new era of
social culture into what was old Russia. Culture,
instead of being the monopoly of the few ex-
ploiters and a tool to maintain their class rule, has

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 109

now become the boon of the broad masses, and a
means for their emancipation. Instead of being
designed to make intellectual slaves of the toilers,
as is always the aim of the capitalist "culture," the
new culture in the Soviet Union is free and scien-
tific. For the first time in history the working
masses have a chance to understand life and to
enjoy the intellectual treasures that modern condi-
tions are able to produce. It is a veritable cultural
revolution which, in the next few years, by drawing
out the repressed intellectual capacities of the
masses under the conditions of Socialism, will pro-
foundly transform every feature and phase of
human thought and intellectual activity. The
Russian revolution is giving the greatest stimula-
tion to science, literature, music, the theatre, etc.,
that the world has ever known.

In the Soviet Union the foundations of the new
culture are being laid by a huge campaign of popu-
lar education. This is also being conducted ac-
cording to the principles of Socialist planning. In
providing for the building of great factories, the
Five-Year Plan also utilizes the new industrializa-
tion for the education of the masses. Mass educa-
tion in the Soviet Union assumes the aspect of a
great "cultural offensive" which also develops with
"Bolshevik tempo." Even foreign capitalistic
observers must remark the breadth and depth of
this unprecedented movement. Duranty cor-
rectly says, (New York Times, Dec. 1, 1931):

110 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

"There seems to be no parallel in history to the
drive for learning in all branches of knowledge,
from reading and writing to the abstruse sciences,
now in progress in the Soviet Union."

Before the revolution only about 7,000,000 chil-
dren attended school; now there are 23,000,000.
The whole school system is growing by leaps and
bounds ; the teaching is according to the most scien-
tific methods, it is carried on in 70 languages, there
being over 100 peoples going to make up the Soviet
Union. A system of compulsory schooling has
been adopted and everywhere applied. In the
secondary schools there are now eight times as
many pupils as in pre-war days. All told, 46,000,-
000 people, one-third of the population, are at-
tending educational institutions. In 1932 the
national government budget calls for an expendi-
ture of 9,200,000,000 rubles for social-cultural
enterprises. This is aside from a veritable net-
work of educational institutions of the Communist
party, the Communist Youth League, the trade
unions, cooperatives, factories, the Red Army, etc.
There is a whole deluge of books pouring from the
printing presses, the Soviet Union being already
the world leader as a publisher of books — not to
speak of their superior quality. The theatre, the
swiftly-growing radio and motion pictures, are also
tremendous educational instruments.

One of the great achievements of this vast work
is the rapid wiping out of illiteracy. In 1913 only

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 111

25% above the age of 10 could read; 90% of
women were illiterate. Illiteracy has now been
practically eliminated from the industrial centers
and it will also soon go from the villages. By the
end of 1932 illiteracy is to be liquidated com-
pletely. The fight against illiteracy is not simply
a matter of the regular educational institutions; a
real assault is being made upon it by the more
educated sections of the masses under the historic
slogan, "Literate, Teach the Illiterate." The
struggle against illiteracy and for education in
general keeps pace with the growth of industry and
the collectivization of the farms. Thus in those
districts where the collectivization is well advanced
the whole body of illiterates are undergoing in-
struction.

But the cultural revolution, as we have already
indicated, is much more than merely giving the
masses an elementary education. It is also more
significant than simply a rapid extension of schools,
scientific institutes, theatres, etc., that is now
taking place in the Soviet Union. It is a pro-
found revolution in all culture. A whole new
cultural system is being born.

Under capitalism science is a slave to the class
interests of the bourgeoisie. Thus biology justi-
fies the mad class struggle and war; economics puts
an unqualified blessing upon wage slavery; history
proves that capitalism is society perfected; psy-
chology explains away poverty on the basis of

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

inferior beings, etc. Capitalist science is also a
veritable fortress of metaphysical concepts of every
kind. But Socialism strikes all these fetters from
science. The working class exploits no subject
class. Therefore, it has no interest to degrade
science into a subtle system of propaganda, but on
the contrary to give it the freest possible develop-
ment. Marxian dialectical materialism destroys
the metaphysics that paralyzes bourgeois science.

Capitalist science is planless and anarchic, the
hit-or-miss task of whoever may be. But Social-
ism organizes science. In the Soviet Union scien-
tific work is being done on a planned basis, with
full government support. There is a special
Scientific Research Sector of the Supreme Eco-
nomic Council. Bukharin says: "The plan of So-
cialist construction is not only a plan of economy;
the process of the rationalization of life, beginning
with the suppression of irrationality in the eco-
nomic sphere, wins away from it one position after
another; the principle of planning invades the
realm of mental production, the sphere of science,
the sphere of theory." 14

Capitalist science sets up a metaphysical separa-
tion of theory and practice, and a corresponding
arbitrary division of intellectual from manual labor.
It is based upon a caste theory and does not de-
velop the creative abilities of the masses. But
Socialism liquidates this reactionary system. In

14 Science at the Crossroads, p. 20.

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 113

the U.S.S.R. scientific theory and practice are
being linked up; science is being brought to the
masses and in so doing is revolutionized; a great
mass development in science is going on such as
exists in no other country; the basis is being laid
for the eventual wiping out of the difference be-
tween so-called "mental" and "physical" labor.

In the U.S.S.R., as part of the general cultural
revolution, religion is being liquidated. Religion,
which Marx called, "the opium of the people," has
been a basic part of every system of exploitation
that has afflicted humanity — chattel slavery, feu-
dalism, capitalism. It has sanctified every war
and every tyrant, no matter how murderous and
reactionary. Its glib phrases about morality,
brotherly love and immortality are the covers be-
hind which the most terrible deeds in history have
been done. Religion is the sworn enemy of lib-
erty, education, science.

Such a monstrous system of dupery and ex-
ploitation is totally foreign to a Socialist society;
firstly, because there is no exploited class to be
demoralized by religion; secondly, because its
childish tissue of superstition is impossible in a
society founded upon Marxian materialism; and
thirdly, because its slavish moral system is out of
place, the new Communist moral code developing
naturally upon the basis of the new modes of pro-
duction and exchange.

Religion is now in deep crisis throughout the

114. TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

capitalist world. The quarrels between "modern-
ists" and "fundamentalists" in American churches
are one form of this crisis. Religion, born in a
primitive world, finds it extremely difficult to sur-
vive in a world of industry and great cities. When
capitalism was young and strong its great scien-
tists, the Darwins, Spencers and Huxleys, were
Atheists; but capitalism, grown decrepit and in
crisis, tries to preserve religion in order to check
the rebellion of the workers. This is why Einstein
("cosmic religion"), Millikan, Eddington, and
other bourgeois scientists now are trying so dili-
gently to "harmonize science and religion." In
the U.S.S.R., as it must be in any Socialist
country, religion dies out in the midst of the grow-
ing culture. As the factories and schools open the
churches close. But stories of religious persecu-
tion in the U.S.S.R. are utterly false, being part
of the anti- Soviet campaign. Freedom of wor-
ship exists unrestricted for all those who desire to
practice. Religious liberty is guaranteed by the
Soviet Constitution, which declares:

"In order to guarantee to all workers real freedom of
conscience, the church is separated from the State and
the school from the church, and freedom of religious
and anti-religious propaganda is bestowed on all citizens."

In the realms of art, literature, music, etc., the
cultural revolution also proceeds at a rapid pace.
New standards, freed from the stultifying profit-

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 115

motive, conventionalism and general reactionary
spirit of capitalism, are being developed in all these
spheres. In this great field, as in all others, the
Russian revolution is carrying humanity on to new
and higher stages. The capitalist world as yet
has not even an inkling of the profound changes
involved in the cultural revolution in the U.S.S.R.

Accomplishing the "Impossible"

IN CARRYING the revolution on to success the Rus-
sian toilers have faced difficulties without parallel
in history. They have had to deal with a whole
series of problems quite unique in human experi-
ence. But under the leadership of the Communist
party, with a clear Marxist-Leninist program, and
with the irresistible power of the revolutionary
masses, they have been able to batter their way
through all of them and to fight on to victory after
victory. At every step in their hard- won progress,
they have had to face, as part of the world capi-
talist attack, a persistent chorus of "It cannot be
done." And when the Russian workers have
solved one set of problems their capitalist enemy
has ignored or grossly misrepresented their victory
and at once developed a whole group of new
reasons why the Russian "experiment" could not
possibly succeed.

No defenders of capitalism have been more
energetic in these counter-revolutionary attempts

116 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

to discredit the Soviet Union in the eyes of the toil-
ing masses than the Social Democrats of the world
and their American brothers, the A. F. of L. lead-
ers, the Gompers, Wolls, Greens, etc. It has been
the special task of the Social Democrats to lend an
air of Marxism to these capitalist anti- Soviet lies.
To this end they have macerated, juggled and dis-
torted Marx to "prove" that the Socialist revolu-
tion must come first in the countries most advanced
industrially and that it is impossible in a country
so backward industrially as old Russia. Every
capitalist lie against the Soviet Union has been
fitted into this counter-revolutionary thesis and
peddled to the masses of workers through the big
organizations controlled by the Social Democrats.
Even now, although he becomes ridiculous to the
whole world, Kautsky, the leading Socialist theo-
retician, denies that any progress has been made
towards Socialism in the Soviet Union.15 He says:
"Since 1918 the Russian proletariat has sunk ever
deeper from year to year from the height it reached.
It is not approaching Socialism but is receding
farther and farther away from it."

According to these capitalistic Socialist pes-
simists, first it was impossible for the Bolsheviki
to seize the power, and then it was doubly impos-
sible to defend the new government against the
armed attacks of world capitalism; next the
U.S.S.R. could not possibly exist in the face of

is Bolshevism at a Deadlock, and other writings.

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 117

the capitalist economic and political blockade ; then
all was surely lost when the great famine of 1921
came; and as for the introduction of the New
Economic Policy, which temporarily made some
concessions to private production and trading
while the foundations of the Socialist industries
were being laid, this was hailed as the beginning
of the end by the gradual re-growth of capitalism ;
and, of course, it was also quite "impossible" to set
in order the chaotic financial system by stabilizing
the ruble, balancing the State budget, etc.

All these grave problems, and many more that
could be cited, were indeed extremely difficult.
Defeat in any one of them would have been a
major and possibly fatal disaster for the revolu-
tion. But the heroic Russian workers and peas-
ants with the Communist party at their head,
solved them all. Consequently, one after another,
the capitalist arguments against the revolution
have been bankrupted in the face of reality. But
no matter, the capitalists have never failed quickly
to cook up a new mess of "impossibilities" for the
Russian revolution, all of which were widely ad-
vertised among the working class by their Social-
ist and A. F. of L. tools.

Especially in the realms of industry were the
problems of the revolution "insoluble." First it
was said that never could the "impractical" Bol-
sheviks put again into operation the industries
ruined in the long years of world war and civil war

118 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

— in 1921 industrial production averaging about
20% of pre-war, and in the metal industry it was
as low as 2 % . Lenin's plans at this time for elec-
trification were typically scoffed at as impossible
by H. G. Wells,16 who had imagined so many
Utopias and bizarre worlds, but whose mind could
not encompass the hard realities of Leninist policy.
The Communists, so it was said, could never set
up a voluntary labor discipline in industry, nor
hold in line the then semi-starved workers. They
could not defeat the counter-revolutionary strikes
and sabotage of the engineers, nor could they pro-
duce a new supply of technicians and skilled work-
ers. Later on, when these earlier problems were
either completely solved or well on the way to
solution, then the capitalist argument had it that
the Bolsheviks, although they could restart the old
industries, never could build new ones; especially
was the Five- Year Plan absurd, etc. And finally,
when the great new plants were built and their
existence impossible to ignore, the capitalist apolo-
gists, with a myriad voices, declared that the work-
ers never could learn to operate these modern
industries.

But the workers have overcome all these "im-
possibilities." One of the most stubborn of all the
problems they have had to meet is that of securing
an adequate supply of reliable managers, engi-
neers, technicians and skilled workers, of building

i6 Russia in the Shadows.

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 119

up whole new industrial cadres. This problem has
been attacked in various ways; the old engineers
have been disciplined and paid highly, foreign spe-
cialists have been brought in, including many
Americans; but the basic approach to the problem
is the education of new cadres of industrial tech-
nicians. This is being done on a huge scale. In
1931 there were 21,000 engineers and technicians
graduated; in 1932 there will be 38,000. In 1932
it is planned to graduate from technical colleges
and schools of all kinds 175,000, from "rabfaks"
(workers' faculties) 121,000, from factory schools
364,000. By the end of 1932 there will be a grand
total of 4,000,000 students in technical colleges,
rabfaks, factory schools, etc., as against 2,700,000
in 1931. One of the most striking developments
in this direction is the Society of Worker Inventors,
with 700,000 members, at the recent Congress of
which the slogan was put forward of, "Save one
billion rubles for the U.S.S.R. in 1932."

In the second Five- Year Plan it is planned to
train 1,500,000 technicians and specialists and to
give technical instruction to from six to seven mil-
lion workers. Such measures have cracked the
backbone of this gigantic problem. But the need
for skilled technical help in the Soviet Union is still
a burning one. The Americans and other foreign
engineers will play an important role for some time
to come; but the Russians themselves, with their
gigantic educational program, are settling defi-

120 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

nitely the "totally insoluble" problem of the indus-
trial technician by the creation of a full supply of
Red factory administrators and engineers, skilled
workers, etc., out of the Russian working class.

In Feb., 1931, Stalin, at a great national work-
ers' production congress, declared :

"The Bolsheviks mu$t become masters of technique !
It is said that technique is difficult. Untrue 1 There are
no fortresses that Bolsheviks cannot capture. We have
solved a series of most formidable problems. We have
overthrown capitalism. We have seized power. We
have built up a mighty Socialist industry. We have
turned the middle peasant towards Socialism. The most
important task of our construction we have accomplished.
Not much is left to do ; to gain technique, to master
science. And when this is achieved, our pace shall be-
come such as we dare not even dream of at present."

Events are proving Stalin right and the pes-
simists wrong. The workers are refuting in prac-
tice the capitalist assertions that they cannot
operate the new plants being built under the
Five- Year Plan. The huge problem of taking
raw peasants from the fields and putting them to
operate the latest type of modern industry clearly
is being solved. Likewise that of combining
democracy and efficiency in the industries. The
productivity of Russian workers is rapidly rising,
a 34% increase in three years. Small wonder in-
deed, with the newness of mass production in the
U.S.S.R., that there were initial difficulties in

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM

putting into full production such great plants as
that in Stalingrad.

The New York Times, Dec. 1, 1931, declares:
"The Stalingrad plant began work with 10,000
hands, a great majority of whom were peasants,
mostly illiterate, many of whom had never seen
a machine." It is in the face of such unparalleled
difficulties that the Russian workers are building
Socialism. And what has since happened in this
plant, the "failure" of which was gleefully hailed
all over the capitalist world ? Duranty says fur-
ther: "In Stalingrad today the latest American
machinery is being handled by girls of 20 no less
efficiently than by men in the factories of Detroit."
The official production records show for the latter
months of 1931: Aug. 1866 tractors, Sept. 2151,
Dec. 2735, Feb. 2875, thus bringing the plant to
a full program basis. Ford recently praised the
quality of these tractors.

"According to the Plan, the Azneft oil fields
were supposed to reach American rapidity of drill-
ing only at the end of the Five- Year Plan (1933).
Several shock-fields, however, caught up to the
American rates in the latter quarter of 1930," says
the USSR in Construction, No. 12.

In the other great industries and modern works
the same record is to be found. Many difficulties
are still encountered, as for example recently in
the Nizhni-Novgorod automobile plant, but these
are chiefly local in character and are soon over-

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

come. Duranty says (New York Times, Jan. 2,
1932), "1931 did for the first time demonstrate
that the Soviet Union not only could build great
producing units but could operate them success-
fully." And lo, another great capitalist "impos-
sibility" has gone to smash in the face of the
revolution. Almost overnight the Russian work-
ers have mastered mass production. The whole
history of capitalist development cannot register
an equal achievement.

But the extra-special, grand "impossibility"
confronting the revolution was to win the peas-
antry to Socialism. This, indeed, it was said, was
utterly out of the question. The great masses of
farmers, making up an overwhelming majority of
the population, were hopelessly attached to the
institutions of private property and bred-in-the-
bone enemies of Socialism. Sooner or later they
were bound to organize and drown out the Com-
munist party and all its works.

How the world capitalists and their Socialist
allies gloated over this prospect ; how they depended
upon the peasants as their great ace-in-the-hole.
But alas, it was not to be; the Russian workers and
peasants also found the answer to this terrific
problem in the gigantic growth of collectivized
farming. This has not only won the masses of
middle peasants for Socialism but has enabled the
practical liquidation of the rich kulaks as a class.

Driven from one propaganda "impossibility" to

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM

another by the achievements of the revolution,
capitalist apologists are now hard-pressed to find
new "arguments." An example of their bank-
ruptcy was given by Isaac Don Levine in a recent
series of sensationalized articles in the New York
American. The thesis of Levine is that the capi-
talists should not worry over the successes of the
Five- Year Plan because the Soviet Union has no
basic natural resources anyhow and the whole busi-
ness is hollow and unimportant. Levine, after a
reckless twisting, misrepresenting and distorting
of official Soviet reports, says: "Singularly poor in
iron, copper, gold and silver, the Soviet Union
lacks the four essential metals for the attainment
of the goals set by Stalin's jazzed edition of the
Five- Year Plan." He says further: "The iron
found above ground in America in the form of ma-
chinery, buildings and equipment, exceeds all the
reserves, visible and possible, in the immense terri-
tory of the Soviet Union." Then he goes on to
negate the supply of coal and water power in the
Soviet Union, to belittle its oil and timber reserves,
etc., reducing the U.S.S.R. to a beggarly country
indeed in point of resources.

Now what are the facts ? First of all, it must
be borne in mind that the U.S.S.R. has been as
yet but sketchily prospected for its mineral wealth.
It is only now that this work is being systematically
undertaken, and almost daily reports arrive of the
discovery of new resources. Already, with vast

124 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

regions still practically unexplored, the U.S.S.R.
has known raw materials resources of gigantic, if
not unequalled proportions. It has a super-
abundance of practically all the basic materials
necessary for the building of a great industrial
system.

(1) Coal: by 1930 the known coal deposits of the
U.S.S.R. were conservatively estimated at 700
billion tons, putting it fourth as a coal country.
Besides this, however, there are rich, undeveloped
deposits in Siberia, stretching over an area as large
as Belgium. (2) Oil: the U.S.S.R. is the first
country with regard to oil reserves, containing
35 % of known world supplies and with new fields
being discovered from time to time. (3) Water
power: already, as we have seen, the second Five-
Year Plan definitely provides for a greater elec-
trical power development than that of the United
States, the most of it from water projects, and
with much still undeveloped. The Angara River
power possibilities are 30 times as much as the
great Dnieperstroy. (4) Iron: the largest iron
ore deposits in the world are the new Kursk fields ;
Prof. Gubkin (Soviet Yearbook, 1930), estimates
these at 40 billion tons of high class ore, and says,
"Preliminary computations permit us to conjec-
ture that the Kursk iron ores will probably double
the known world resources of iron ore." (5) Cop-
per: until recently the known supplies were lim-
ited; but large deposits have lately been found in

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 125

Kazakstan, and in Feb., 1932, a great new field
was reported from the Okhostk-Udsk region, with
deposits of rich quality and extending over 20
square kilometers. (6) Manganese: of this metal
the U.S.S.R. contains the world's greatest deposits.
(7) Platinum: same as in case of manganese.

(9) Gold: important new fields have heen found
which will make U.S.S.R. a chief world producer.

(10) Silver: a weak spot but new developments
are extending production. (11) Timber: the
U.S.S.R. has the greatest body of standing timber
in the world. The bourgeoisie, seeking reasons
why "it cannot be done," will have to look in some
other direction than that of supplies of raw
materials.

The capitalist arguments that "it is impossible"
also found their echoes within the Communist party
of the Soviet Union, where they reflected the
despair of the defeated and declining capitalist
remnants in the U.S.S.R. Their outspoken rep-
resentative was Trotzky. He formulated theories
that it was impossible to build Socialism in one
country — that first the world revolution was nec-
essary; that the Party was degenerating and sur-
rendering to a rapid growth of capitalist elements
in city and country; that the Socialist industry
development was destined to go on in a declining
curve of new production; that the Soviet Union
had abandoned the world revolution, etc. The
logic of his position would have led to the precipi-

126 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

tation of abortive and fatal Communist revolts
abroad and disastrous civil war at home against
the great middle masses of peasants. All this
would have surely defeated the revolution.

Such, in brief, was the "left" deviation, which
was Menshevism in thin disguise, an opportunist
retreat from the hard struggle under cover of
"left" phrases. Then there was the openly right
deviation, led by Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky.
The rights were alarmed at the rapid speed of in-
dustrialization; they were frightened at the sharp
class struggle against the kulaks; they feared the
workers would not stand the strain of carrying out
the Five- Year Plan; they believed it impossible to
raise the gigantic amounts of necessary capital in
the face of the world capitalist financial blockade
against the Soviet Union; they scoffed at the pros-
pect of building the State farms and collectives.
As a result of their wrong analysis, they wanted to
make concessions to the kulaks and to slow down
the fast tempo of industrialization. This, like
Trotzky's plans, would have been a fatal error. It
would have strengthened the capitalist elements in
the U.S.S.R. and disastrously checked the growth
of Socialism.

The capitalist world was filled with great hope
by the development of these deviations, which were
the subject of wide discussion in the Russian Com-
munist party from 1926-29. Surely now, it was
said, the Party will be split and the Soviet govern-

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 127

ment disastrously weakened, if not overthrown.
But again their hopes came to naught. Under the
leadership of the Central Committee so ably headed
by Stalin, the Party masses, supported by the
working class generally, rejected and completely
crushed first Trotzkyism and then the openly right
deviation. Trotzky later developed a definitely
counter-revolutionary position; he is now capital-
ism's chief maligner and slanderer of the Soviet
Union, the whole bourgeois press being open and
willing to pay for his attacks upon the Party and
the U.S.S.R.

Life has fully justified the position of the Party
in these historic controversies. The final answer to
both the "left" and right deviations is the tremen-
dous success of the Five-Year Plan, with its
gigantic growth of Socialist industry and collectiv-
ized farming, burning enthusiasm of the workers,
rising living standards of the toiling masses, the
winning of the middle peasants for Socialism, the
practical liquidation of the kulaks and nepmen,
the great perspectives opened up by the second
Five-Year Plan, the growing world prestige and
revolutionizing effect of the Soviet Union upon
the enslaved masses in all countries, and, in conse-
quence of all this, the greatest degree of unity that
the Russian Communist party has ever known.

The building of Socialism in the Soviet Union
still confronts many great problems. And the
Socialist system there will continue to face grave

128 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

dangers and difficulties until the world power of
the bourgeoisie is broken by the world's workers.
But its inner problems are those of a successful,
growing new social order. Socialism in the U.S.
S.R. has definitely proved its soundness. At the
XVI Party Congress Stalin thus put the question :

"When we speak of our difficulties, we have in view not
decline and not stagnation in our development, but the
growth of our forces, the surging upwards of our forces,
the forward march, of our economy. How many points
to advance by a given date, by what percentage to in-
crease our output, how many more million hectares to
sow, how many months earlier than the plan to build a
works, a factory, a railway — our difficulties, in contra-
distinction to the difficulties of, say, America or Britain,
are difficulties of growth, difficulties of progress."

Socialism and Communism

THE FINAL aim of the Communist International is
to overthrow world capitalism and replace it by
world Communism, "the basis for which has been
laid by the whole course of historical development."
On this the Program of the Communist Interna-
tional says :

"Communist society will abolish the class division of
society, i.e., simultaneously with the anarchy in produc-
tion, it will abolish all forces of exploitation and oppres-
sion of man by man. Society will no longer consist of
antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will
represent a united commonwealth of labor. For the first

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 129

time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own
hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives
and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and
nations, mankind will devote all its energies to the strug-
gle against the forces of nature, to the development and
strengthening of its own collective might."

The future Communist society will be Stateless.
With private property in industry and land abol-
ished (but, of course, not in articles of personal
use) , with exploitation of the toilers ended, and with
the capitalist class finally defeated and all classes
liquidated, there will then be no further need for
the State, which in its essence, is an organ of class
repression. The revolutionary State of the period
of transition from capitalism to Communism, the
dictatorship of the proletariat, will, in the words of
Engels, "wither away" and be replaced by a scien-
tific technical "administration of things." The
present planning boards in the Soviet Union are
forerunners of such a Stateless society.

Under Communism the guiding principle will be:
"From each according to his ability, to each accord-
ing to his needs." That is, the distribution of life
necessities — food, clothing, shelter, education, etc.
— will be free, without let or hindrance. Commu-
nist production, carried out upon the most efficient
basis and freed from the drains of capitalist ex-
ploiters, will provide such an abundance of neces-
sary commodities that there will be plenty for all
with a minimum of effort. There will then be no

ISO TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

need for pinch-penny measuring and weighing.
Proletarian discipline and solidarity will be quite
sufficient to prevent possible idlers from taking
advantage of this free regime of distribution by
either refusing to work or by unsocial wasting.

The Communist system will bring the greatest
advance in culture and general well-being of the
masses in the history of the human race. The
present progress in the Soviet Union in this re-
spect is only a bare indication of the tremendous
developments to come. Industry, freed from capi-
talist anarchy and exploitation, will develop a high
efficiency and lay the basis for genuine mass pros-
perity. Culture, emancipated from bourgeois
class ends, will become the property of the masses
and pass to new and higher levels.

The road to this social development can only be
opened by revolution. This is because the question
of power is involved. The capitalist class, like an
insatiable blood-sucker, hangs to the body of the
toiling masses and can be dislodged only by force.
But when the workers have conquered power, how-
ever, then the way is clear for an orderly de-
velopment of society by a process of evolution.
Naturally, even after capitalism has been over-
thrown and the power taken by the workers, society
cannot simply leap to a complete Communist sys-
tem. There are stages of development to be gone
through. The first of these is the transition period
from the overthrow of capitalism to the establish-

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 131

ment of Socialism; then there is the period of
Socialism, which is the first phase of Communism.
The complete realization of Socialism and Com-
munism in any country implies the defeat of the
world bourgeoisie.

The Soviet Union has been passing through the
transition period from the overthrow of capitalism
to the establishment of Socialism. It has been
laying the economic and social foundations of
Socialism by the building of a great system of
socialized industry and agriculture, by raising the
living and cultural standards of the toiling masses,
by decisively defeating the nepmen and kulaks,
remnants of the old exploiting classes. The foun-
dations of the Socialist economy are being com-
pleted with the carrying out of the Five-Year
Plan. Capitalism has been decisively defeated in
the Soviet Union. Molotov says: "The funda-
mental Leninist question 'who will beat whom' has
been decided against capitalism and in favor of
Socialism."

The second Five-Year Plan carries the Soviet
Union definitely into the period of Socialism; the
resolution of the XVII conference of the Com-
munist party of the Soviet Union says : "The funda-
mental political task of the second Five-Year Plan
is the final liquidation of the capitalist class and of
classes in general, the complete removal of the
causes which produce class differences and exploi-
tation, the overcoming of the remnants of capital-

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

ism in economy and in the minds of the people, the
conversion of the whole of the working population
of the country into conscious and active builders
of the classless Socialist society." But, says Molo-
tov, the stage of Socialism, "will not by a long way
be ended in the second five-year period."

On the general characteristics of the Socialist
stage of development and its relation to Com-
munism, the Program of the Communist Inter-
national says :

"This higher stage of Communism, the stage in which
Communist society has already developed on its own
foundations, in which an enormous growth of social pro-
ductive forces has accompanied the manifold development
of man — pre-supposes, as an historical condition prece-
dent, a lower stage of development, the stage of Socialism.
At this lower stage Communist society only just emerges
from capitalist society and bears all the economic, ethical
and intellectual birthmarks it has inherited from the
society from whose womb it is just emerging. The pro-
ductive forces of Socialism are not yet sufficiently de-
veloped to assure a distribution of products of labor
according to needs ; these are distributed according to
the amount of labor expended. Division of labor, i.e., the
system whereby certain groups perform certain labor
functions, and especially the distinction between mental
and manual labor, still exists. Although classes are
abolished, traces of the old class divisions of society, and,
consequently, remnants of the proletarian State power,
coercion, laws, still exist. Consequently, certain traces
of inequality which have not yet managed to die out
altogether, still remain. The antagonism between town

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 133

and country has not yet been entirely removed. But none
of these survivals of former society is protected or de-
fended by any social force. Being the product of a
definite level of productive forces, they will disappear
as rapidly as mankind, freed from the fetters of the capi-
talist system, subjugates the forces of nature, re-
educates itself in the spirit of Communism, and passes
from Socialism to complete Communism."

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

THE PROLETARIAN revolution marks the birth of real
democracy. For the first time the toiling masses
become free. Under chattel slavery, feudalism
and capitalism they were oppressed and enslaved,
merely the forms of this slavery changing with the
varying modes of exploitation. All the capitalist
"democracies," the United States included, are
only the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, masked
with hypocritical democratic pretenses. But the
proletarian revolution, by doing away with private
ownership of the social means of production and
distribution and by abolishing the exploitation of
the toilers, destroys the very foundations of en-
slavement and lays the groundwork for the estab-
lishment of a true democracy in which there are
neither oppressors nor oppressed.

The first form of the new toilers' democracy
after the overthrow of capitalism is the dictatorship
of the proletariat. Of this type of State Marx

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

said, with wonderful penetration, over two genera-
tions ago:

"Between capitalist and Communist society there lies a
period of revolutionary transformation from the former
to the latter. A stage of political transition corresponds
to this period, and the State during this period can be
no other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the pro-
letariat."

The dictatorship of the proletariat, unlike the
capitalist dictatorship, makes no pretenses of being
an all-class democracy, a democracy of both ex-
ploiters and exploited. It is frankly a democracy
of the toiling masses, directed against the ex-
ploiters. Its freedom is only for useful producers,
not for social parasites. Lenin, writing before the
Russian revolution, says: "Together with an im-
mense expansion of democracy — for the first time
becoming democracy of the poor, democracy of the
people and not democracy of the rich folk — the
dictatorship of the proletariat will produce a whole
series of restrictions of liberty in the case of the
oppressors, exploiters and capitalists."

The dictatorship of the proletariat, or the Work-
ers' and Farmers' government, is a kind of State.
Lenin thus defines a State: "The State is a par-
ticular form of organization of force; it is the or-
ganization of violence for the holding down of some
class." Thus the capitalist State, strong right arm
of the bourgeoisie, has as its basic function, the

17 The State and Revolution, p. 90.

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 135

holding by force of the working class under capi-
talist exploitation. But, Lenin goes on to ex-
plain: "What is the class which the proletariat must
hold down? It can only be, naturally, the exploit-
ing class, i.e., the bourgeoisie." The fundamental
difference between the capitalist State and the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat, however, is that the
former is the rule of a small, exploiting minority,
and it perpetuates this rule by force and dema-
gogy; while the latter is the rule of the great toil-
ing majority and it directs its power towards
abolishing every form of exploitation and the
liquidation of the exploiting classes. The Pro-
gram of the Communist International says :

"The dictatorship of the proletariat is a continuation
of the class struggle under new conditions. The dicta-
torship of the proletariat is a stubborn fight — bloody and
bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic,
pedagogical and administrative — against the remnants
of the exploiting classes within the country, against the
upshoots of the new bourgeoisie that spring up on the
basis of the still prevailing commodity production.'*

To establish the dictatorship of the proletariat
it is not merely a question of making over the de-
feated capitalist government. Engels states in his
1888 preface to the Communist Manifesto: "One
thing especially was proved by the (Paris) Com-
mune, viz., that the working class cannot simply lay
hold of the ready-made State machinery and wield
it for its own purposes." The capitalist State

136 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

must be broken down and the Workers' State built
from the ground up on entirely different princi-
ples, and this was done in the U.S.S.R,. In doing
so it has been necessary to set up a powerful Red
Army and the well-known O.G.P.U. to defend
the revolution against the capitalist attacks from
within and without.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is the demo-
cratic rule of the toiling masses, with the working
class in the lead, developing the revolutionary
program and forming the core of the revolutionary
organization. The Program of the Communist In-
ternational says :

"The dictatorship of the proletariat implies that the
industrial workers alone are capable of leading the entire
mass of the toilers. On the other hand, while represent-
ing the dictatorship of a single class, the dictatorship of
the proletariat at the same time represents a special form
of class alliance between the proletariat, as the vanguard
of the toiling masses, and the numerous non-proletarian
sections of the toiling masses, or the majority of them.
It represents an alliance for the complete overthrow of
capital, for the complete suppression of the opposition
of the bourgeoisie and its attempts at restoration, an
alliance aiming at the complete building up and consoli-
dation of Socialism."

Only when the capitalist class is decisively beaten
on a national and international scale and class lines
finally broken down will the workers' need for a
State die out and the proletarian dictatorship
"wither away." Under the classless, Stateless

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 137

regime of Communism there will exist a broad and
genuine freedom such as the world heretofore has
not even remotely approached. Lenin says in his
The State and Revolution, p. 91 :

"Only then will be possible and will be realized a really
full democracy, a democracy without any exceptions.
And only then will democracy itself begin to wither away
in virtue of the simple fact that, freed from capitalist
slavery, from the innumerable horrors, savagery, absurdi-
ties, and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will
gradually become accustomed to the observance of the
elementary rules of social life, known for centuries, re-
peated for thousands of years in all sermons. They will
become accustomed to their observance without force,
without constraint, without subjection, without the spe-
cial apparatus for compulsion which is called the State."

The government of the Soviet Union is a dicta-
torship of the proletariat, or rule of the workers.
For the toiling masses of factory and farm it es-
tablishes a genuine democracy, a democracy totally
different from and incomparably in advance of the
so-called democracy of the capitalist countries.
But, as we have remarked, this democracy does not
extend to the exploiting classes, or rather what is
left of them. The Soviet government, as a Work-
ers' State, is liquidating these classes and the whole
system of robbery upon which their rule was based.
The economic and political power of the big capi-
talists and landlords has been completely shattered
and they no longer exist as a class ; now the kulaks
(rich farmers) and nepmen (petty traders) are

138 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

going the same way into social oblivion as classes.
All this has not been accomplished without the
sharpest struggle which, in its early stages,
amounted to civil war. But the current blood-
curdling stories of violence and persecution are
gross fabrications, circulated by capitalist agents
to discredit the Soviet Union in the eyes of the
world's toilers.

Citizenship in the Soviet democracy is based
upon work, only those doing useful labor being
allowed to vote. The parasitic remnants, such as
ex-nobles, Czarist officers, landlords, capitalists,
clericals, etc., are disfranchised. There are no
qualifications of sex, nationality, residence, etc.;
whoever works can vote. The Soviets are made
up of representatives coming directly from the
toiling masses, from the factories and the villages.
Not wealth, as in all the capitalist countries, but
actual service to society, is the foundation of citi-
zenship in the U.S.S.R.

Not only in politics do the toiling masses exer-
cise their democracy, but also in every field of
social organization and activity. The trade unions,
based upon factory committees, establish an indus-
trial democracy completely without parallel in any
other part of the world. Even in the realms of
art and science and literature, the influence, direct
and indirect, of the working masses in the factories
and fields is felt. For example, the formula-
tion of the second Five- Year Plan is being made

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 139

on the basis of the broadest mass discussion.
Duranty says, (New York Times, Mar. 5, 1932) :
"Every stage of the work is subjected to full dis-
cussion by workers, party members, executives and
government officials." In no country in the world
do the toilers enjoy such free speech, right of or-
ganization and general participation in every social
institution as in the Soviet Union. Tales about
the personal dictatorship of Stalin, about "forced
labor," about the suppression of the freedom of
the masses, are, like the earlier stories about
the "nationalization of women," etc., plain lies.
Charges by enemies that the Soviet system is an
oppressive autocracy conflict fatally with their
other charges that there is so much democracy in
industry that it interferes with efficiency.

Lenin says: "The Soviet democracy consists of
workers organized so informally that for the first
time the people as a whole are learning to gov-
ern." 18 To carry out their democratic activities
in all social fields, the Russian workers and peas-
ants have built up the most gigantic mass organiza-
tions in human history. These stretch over all
phases of the economic, political and social life, and
are of decisive influence. Among the more impor-
tant of them are the Communist organizations
proper (the Party, the Youth and the Pioneers)
with about 15,000,000 members all told, the trade
unions with 17,000,000, and the consumers' co-

is The Soviets at Work.

140 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

operatives with 70,000,000. Besides, there are
many more vast organizations for culture, defense,
sport, aviation, etc., containing scores of millions
of members. The Soviet electorate, numbering
85,000,000 voters, is by far the largest in the world.
These tremendous mass organizations of toilers,
entirely without comparison in capitalist countries,
are the very backbone of the whole Soviet system.
They are all growing very rapidly, an example
being the Party, which has increased seven-fold,
from 440,000 members to 2,800,000, since the death
of Lenin.

While the workers in all capitalist countries face
ever-increasing tendencies towards Fascism and
the denial of their most elementary rights, in the
Soviet Union the workers and peasants are build-
ing a great new freedom. In the comparison,
fatal to the world capitalist system, of the decaying
capitalism as against the rising Socialism, this fact
has a vital significance that the oppressed toilers
of the world will not fail to understand. It is one
of the revolutionary nails that are being driven into
the coffin of moribund capitalism.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union

THE LEADER and organizer of the proletarian dic-
tatorship is the Communist party. In a Socialist
society, based upon the workers and farmers and
where the aim of the government is to advance

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM

solely the interests of these toiling masses, there
is room for only one Party, the Communist Party.
Of course, in the capitalist countries the Socialists
and other defenders of the pseudo-democracy of
capitalism protest against this situation and de-
mand the right of political organization for the
remnants of the old exploiting classes. But what
stupidity it would be for the victorious workers,
whose aim it is to liquidate all classes, to permit
these counter-revolutionary elements to organize
themselves into political parties and thus enable
them to sabotage the new regime, to fight for the re-
establishment of their system of robbing the work-
ers and generally to act as a barrier to the
progress of the new society.

It is a capitalist lie that pictures the Russian
Communist party as a sort of clique ruling over
the masses. On the contrary, the doors of the
Party, although they are closed against the rem-
nants of the former ruling classes, are wide open
to all earnest workers and poor farmers who accept
its full program and are willing to perform the
hard tasks which it demands of its members. A
great mass organization itself and growing by
leaps and bounds, the Communist party gives all
possible stimulation to the other vast mass organiza-
tions which, under its general leadership, are the
foundations of the proletarian democracy. The
toiling masses of the Soviet Union know that the
Communist party is their great leader and they

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

give it their enthusiastic support. They have
learned from long years of the bitterest struggle
any people has ever passed through that the Party
of Lenin is the only Party of the revolution.

The Russian Communist party is unique in
function and structure. As the Party of the toil-
ers it has the responsibility of facing and solving
every major problem of the revolution. It is the
Communist party that works out the basic line of
action in all spheres of the economic and political
life. As the crystallization of the most class con-
scious elements of the toiling masses, it gives the
revolutionary lead in every direction. For this
purpose its structure is especially adapted, being
based upon nuclei (units) in the shops, villages,
army, trade unions, cooperatives, schools, Soviets
and every other institution. It is thus part of the
very flesh and bone of the toilers everywhere.
Without a doubt, the Russian Communist party,
with its manifold tasks and roots deep into the
masses, is by far the most complicated and highest
type of organization ever developed by mankind
in all its history.

The Communist party is the brain and heart and
nerves of the Russian revolution, and so it must
be in any proletarian revolution. It makes the
most severe demands upon its membership. They
must be models of proletarian courage, initiative,
energy and resourcefulness. They are the leaven
that lightens the whole lump. In the bitter civil

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM

war they were the leaders and inspirers at the fight-
ing front. In the dark period of the great hunger
and famine it was the Communists who set the
example of self-denial and encouragement for the
masses. And now, in the building of Socialism,
it is they, who, in the face of incredible obstacles,
are carrying through the great Five- Year Plan to
success, to the amazement of the whole capitalist
world. In every crisis it is the Communists who
fling themselves into the breach; for every great
problem it is they who come forward with the solu-
tion and militantly apply it. That is why the
Party of Lenin stands unchallenged as the leader
of the masses in the Soviet Union.

The Communist party of the U.S.S.R. is based
upon the principles of democratic centralism, de-
veloped by Lenin. That is, first the decision is
democratically arrived at by the widest mass dis-
cussion and then, the discussion closed, the policy
is executed with strong discipline and the mobiliza-
tion of all possible forces. This is an irresistible
combination. The mass discussion lays the basis
not only for a correct decision but also for the dis-
cipline necessary to carry it through effectively.
The Communist party of the Soviet Union is in-
comparably more democratic than the Socialist
parties, the A. F. of L. and other conservative
trade unions of the world. These organizations,
with their hard bureaucratic ruling cliques and
their contempt for the masses, are true expressions

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of the autocratic capitalist system of which they
are such loyal defenders. The Communist party
is the bearer of the first real democracy in the mod-
ern world.

A recent example of the workings of Com-
munist democratic centralism was seen in con-
nection with the struggle against Trotzkyism and
the right deviation. These issues were the sub-
jects of the broadest mass discussions, no other
country or organization in the world has seen the
like. Not only the Party membership but millions
of other workers were involved. The results were
briefly: a fundamental and mass analysis of every
angle of the industrialization and other problems
confronting the U.S.S.R.; the crystallization of a
clear policy, backed by a solid mass opinion united
and clarified in the great discussion; the over-
whelming defeat of Trotzky and Bukharin, both
ideologically and by the almost unanimous vote of
the workers; the achievement of an unparalleled
unification of the Party; and finally, the building
up of a militant and intelligent mass discipline and
mobilization of forces which is the basis of the ter-
rific pace in carrying through the Five- Year Plan.
Democratic centralism, the expression of the fun-
damental democracy of the workers and their natu-
ral discipline, bodes ill for the capitalist system.

The proof of the effectiveness of the Russian
Communist party and its program stands amply
demonstrated by life itself. It is the Communist

THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 145

party that has led and organized the toiling masses
to the accomplishment of all the "impossibilities"
of building Socialism in the Soviet Union. It is
the Communist parties in the other countries, led
by the Communist International and supported by
the masses, that will strike the death-blow to world
capitalism and build Socialism universally. The
Soviet Union, the crystallization of the Communist
program in life, and the shock-brigade of the world
proletariat, rising and flourishing with its great
revolutionary strength in the midst of a decaying,
declining capitalist system, is the hope and guar-
antee of a new life for the starved and exploited
of the earth.

CHAPTER III

CAPITALIST ATTEMPTS TO
LIQUIDATE THE CRISIS

(a) Quack Capitalist Economic Remedies

IN CHAPTER i we have seen that the capitalists all
over the world try to find a way out of the crisis
for themselves by throwing the burden of the
crisis upon the workers and poor farmers through
wage-cuts, reductions in social insurance, speed-up
in industry, lengthening of working hours, tax laws
directed against the producers, inflation of the cur-
rency, etc., by intensifying their competition
against each other through tariffs, dumping, rate
wars, etc., and by preparing to deluge the world
with a new blood-bath of war.

This is the main line of capitalist policy. Be-
sides, and in connection with it, the capitalists have
developed a whole series of additional "remedies"
to cure the economic weaknesses of capitalism and
to shield the capitalists from their effects. It is
with these measures especially that we shall now
deal. They have to do with both of the major
contradictions of capitalism; the economic gap be-
tween the producing and consuming powers of the
masses, and the class conflict between the capital-

146

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 147

ists and the exploited masses of workers and farm-
ers. First let us deal with those of an economic
character.

The Rationalization of Industry

IN THE years following the World War the capi-
talist countries, under stress of the growing eco-
nomic crisis, developed a world-wide movement for
the rationalization of industry. In this the United
States took the lead. Mass production, the speed-
up in industry, became the cure-all for capitalism.
Ford was worshipped as the patron saint of the
capitalists everywhere. American speed-up meth-
ods spread themselves throughout the capitalist
world. The League of Nations officially supported
rationalization.

True to their role as "agents of the bour-
geoisie," the Socialist parties in the various coun-
tries took up the program of the rationalization of
industry and made a fetish of it. They even be-
came more enthusiastic than the capitalists them-
selves. They put it forward to the masses not only
as the way to capitalist prosperity, but also the
golden road to the gradual establishment of So-
cialism. The British Labor Party and trade
unions became a tail to the speed-up plans of Mond
and other industrialists, endorsing the League of
Nations' rationalization program, the first pro-
vision of which is "to secure the maximum efficiency
of labor with the minimum of effort." The Ger-

148 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

man Social Democracy was no whit behind, its
unions declaring that: "In full agreement with the
memorandum of the German industrialists, we con-
sider that rationalization is the most important
condition for the well-being of the nation." The
Socialist party of the United States, including the
Muste "left" group, grew no less enthusiastic over
this bosses' plan to still more sharply exploit the
workers.

The leaders of the American Federation of
Labor, of course, fell into step with the bosses for
the rationalization of industry. Their main pol-
icy, variously expressed as the B. & O. Plan, the
"higher strategy of labor," and the "new wage pol-
icy," was collaboration with the bosses to increase
production. Industrial efficiency became the tin
god of trade unionism. Wm. Green said, Ameri-
can Federationist, (Jan., 1928) : "The Union is the
workers' business agency for industrial efficiency."
The trade union leaders made a strong plea to the
capitalists to let them organize their workers for
joint exploitation. They declared that the labor
movement had come to maturity; the class struggle
was over; class consciousness was out-of-date; now
nothing remained to do but cooperate with the
capitalists for the industrial speed-up, which would
automatically benefit everybody. They hired ef-
ficiency engineers for the unions and set out arm-
in-arm with the employers to drive the workers
ever faster in industry.

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 149

But now the whole rationalization of industry
movement is ideologically bankrupt. While the
bosses, of course, seek to increase the speed-up in
the plants that are operating, it is patent for all
who have eyes to see that it offers no solution for
the crisis. The entire rationalization of industry
philosophy was based upon the illusion that capi-
talist markets automatically extend themselves to
absorb capitalist production. But in reality the
rationalization movement, by hugely developing
the productivity of labor while the consuming
power of the masses lagged far behind, greatly
sharpened the major contradiction between capi-
talist production and markets, and it was one of
the main factors in bringing about the present
world-wide economic collapse. That which was to
save capitalism just about ruined it.

The American "New Capitalism"

THE RATIONALIZATION movement reached its high-
est pitch in the United States. Here it was based
on the principles of mass production and "high"
wages, "protection" and inflation of the home mar-
ket by sky-high tariffs and installment buying, and
a militant imperialistic drive all over the world to
conquer markets for capital and other commodi-
ties. This was the so-called new capitalism.

This "new capitalism" was hailed as ushering in
a new era. Its proponents declared that it pro-

150 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

vided the way to liquidate the conflict between
capitalist production and exchange, and that, con-
sequently, it had solved the tormenting cyclical
crisis. The "new capitalism" was to abolish pov-
erty, to do away with the class struggle and to
open up an endless perspective of industrial devel-
opment. Its champions boastfully shouted that
Ford had hopelessly beaten Marx and that there
never could be a revolution in the United States.
And all the capitalist world, harassed by the ever-
encroaching general crisis, looked to the American
capitalist heaven with wonder and hope, patterning
after it as best they could. The Social Fascists
of the world hailed the movement as the savior of
capitalism. Even in the ranks of the American
Communist party the theory found expression;
Lovestone, later expelled, developing the notion
that American capitalism provided an exception to
the general laws of capitalism.

But what a sad awakening was in store. The
American capitalist dream has turned into a dread-
ful nightmare. The terrible economic crisis is
upon us again and with more devastating effects
than ever before. It is exactly in the United
States where the drop in production has been most
catastrophic, where the army of the unemployed is
the largest. Mass production has flooded the lim-
ited markets with a tidal wave of unsaleable com-
modities; "high" wages have turned out to be a
tragic joke in the face of the gigantic unemploy-

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 151

ment and wholesale wage-cuts. The "new capi-
talism" has proved itself to be very much a part
of the old capitalism of the rest of the world. The
savior very badly needs saving. And the purse-
proud Ajnerican businessman is humiliated in the
eyes of the whole capitalist world. Indeed, his
erstwhile admirer, Mussolini, was unkind enough
recently even to blame the world economic crisis
upon exactly the boasted American mass produc-
tion. After all, Marxism has triumphed over
Fordism.

In the "new capitalism" the thing counted upon
to cure the basic economic weakness of capitalism
was "high" wages. Its advocates, with Ford at
their head, had a glimmering of the menacing con-
tradiction between the producing and consuming
powers of the masses, of the folly of going ahead
developing production on the simple theory of
unlimited markets. In words at least they recog-
nized the necessity of increasing the low purchas-
ing power of the masses. Their whole conception
was best developed by Foster and Catchings in
their books, Business Without a Buyer and The
Road to Plenty. They argued, with their theory
of "financing the buyer," that economic crises
could be averted if, at the first sign of such, the
declining purchasing power of the masses was
promptly bolstered up by the initiation of broad
building programs. President Hoover, as is
known, was an advocate of this theory.

152 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

But it was all a sham and a delusion. The so-
called "financing of the buyer" never took place
under the "new capitalism," nor could it. To sup-
pose otherwise is to assume the possibility of the
capitalists progressively giving up their profits.
The alleged high wages during the heyday of this
theory were confined almost entirely to the skilled
workers. The gains to the buying power of the
masses in this respect were more than offset by the
accompanying huge increases in industrial and
agricultural productivity. The whole thing was
only an elaborate method of intensified rational-
ization of industry. The exploitation of the work-
ers was increased, not diminished. The mass of
surplus value taken by the employers was relatively
and actually greater, not less. The basic economic
effect was to still further widen the gap between
the producing and consuming powers of the
masses. This deepening of the economic contra-
diction is graphically illustrated by the following
figures, taken from Tugwell's Industry's Coming
of Age and the 1927 U. S. Census of Manufac-
tures :

Wages paid Value added l»y manufacture

1914 — $ 4,009,000,000 $ 9,224,000,000

1923 — 11,000,000,000 25,832,000,000

1927— 10,800,000,000 27,500,000,000

During the Coolidge period American capitalism
was able to make a great show of prosperity, not
because it had overcome the major economic

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 153

contradiction of capitalism, but because of a
whole series of temporarily advantageous factors.
Among these were the huge loans to war-stricken
Europe, which translated themselves largely into
exports of manufactured goods; the easy conquest
of world markets by powerful American imperial-
ism, unscathed by the war, in the face of the
broken-down European competitors ; the growth of
the automobile industry; the development of in-
stallment buying, which for a time artificially
stimulated the market, etc.

But these erstwhile favorable factors have now
radically altered. The automobile industry has
become more than saturated; the installment sys-
tem has exploded; exports have fallen off, with
the European capitalist powers constantly meeting
the United States with a sharper competition, etc.
Hence, the inner contradictions of American im-
perialism are able to manifest themselves with full
force and they are doing so with a vengeance.
When Hoover blames Europe and the war for the
crisis he is only a shallow apologist for capitalism.
The fact is that American capitalism, like world
capitalism in general, is rotten at the heart. The
present great economic world crisis began in the
United States.

The crisis has shown conclusively just how feeble
and artificial was the American plan of "financing
the buyer." At the outset of the crisis President
Hoover made many spectacular gestures in line

154 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

with this theory. He called national conferences
of industrialists, bankers, and "labor leaders."
Then he filled the country with rosy prophecies
that the crisis would be promptly liquidated by the
gigantic building, no-wage-cut program outlined
by his conferences.

But the whole thing turned out an inglorious
fizzle. The "financing of the buyer" degenerated
into an attempt by Hoover to exorcize the crisis
by pollyanna prosperity ballyhoo. The "great"
construction program developed into the biggest
sag the building industry has ever known. Even
the government building program failed to mate-
rialize, the New York American, (Mar. 16, 1932),
stating, "The total expended on public works (na-
tional, state, local) was actually less in 1931 than
in 1929." And as for keeping up wage scales,
hardly were the Hoover conferences concluded
than the wage-cuts began, and since then sweeping
slashes have taken place in the railroad, mining,
steel, textile and many other industries. The
Grand Lama of the "high" wage theory, Ford
himself, has also put through general wage-cuts.
Likewise, the government, locally and nationally,
is reducing wages in every direction.

But the most graphic repudiation of the scheme
of "financing the buyer" is to be found in the
starvation unemployment relief system of the
Hoover government. The throwing of 12,000,-
000 workers into unemployment gave the market

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 155

an awful jolt because of the reduction in the gen-
eral purchasing power of the masses. Here was
a good chance to "finance the buyer" by giving
the unemployed a system of government insur-
ance. But instead they have been given only the
most miserable charity dole. To do otherwise
would touch the sacred profits of the bosses. The
only elements to which the Hoover government
has extended assistance in the crisis are the banks,
the railroads, the big taxpayers.

Thus the fire of the economic crisis exposes the
fact that the results of the "new capitalism" are
the same basically as those of capitalist imperialism
generally, only more ruthless and devastating.
The American capitalist class is as deep in the
mud as its European rivals are in the mire, and
like them, it throws the burdens of the crisis upon
the working class, it rationalizes its industries,
enters more desperately than ever into the struggle
for international markets, and takes the world lead
in preparing war as a way out of the crisis. The
"new capitalism" has not cured the contradictions
of capitalism, but has enormously sharpened them.

Trusts and Cartels

IN HIS work, Imperialism, (p. 12), Lenin says,
"Half a century ago when Marx wrote Capital
free competition was considered by the majority
of economists as one of Nature's laws." But the

156 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

development of imperialism and the intensification
of competition on every front has ended such no-
tions. Now capitalism everywhere strives to
eliminate competition and to establish monopoly.
Thus the maze of trusts and cartels on a local,
national and international scale. The aims of
these monopolistic organizations is to screw up
prices, to cut labor costs, to control markets, etc.
One of their major objectives is to restrict pro-
duction, to cramp the expansive productive forces
within the confines of the narrow markets. To
this end every reactionary practice has been used,
from suppression of important inventions to whole-
sale destruction of commodities and means of
production. This is typical of the anti-social,
parasitic character of decadent monopolistic capi-
talism, to attempt to limit production for the
benefit of a few idle owners in a world where the
overwhelming majority of the people are lacking
the necessities of life. In Solidarity, (Nov.,
1931), P. Boyden gives a number of examples of
such commodity destruction, from which the fol-
lowing items are culled:

"A few months ago, in Oakland, Cal., 100,000 gallons
of milk were dumped into the river. At about the same
time, 40,000 salmon were destroyed in Ketchikan Bay,
Alaska. In Los Angeles 120 carloads of cabbages were
plowed under in the fields. Not long ago in California
a Rotary Club played baseball with 60,000 eggs that
were destroyed to keep them out of the market. And it

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 157

is the same in other parts of the world ; in Brazil 2,000,000
sacks of coffee were thrown into the sea, in Australia vast
herds of sheep are simply massacred to keep the price of
lamb high. Corn is poisoned so that it will be unfit for
human consumption." *

But trusts and cartels have not proved a cure
for the economic crisis, any more than has the
American "new capitalism." This is true, both
for capitalism as a whole and for the respective
industries. Instead of "stabilizing" industry, as
their proponents say, these organizations are, on
the contrary, feeding the crisis with their policies
of rationalization of industry, mass lay-offs, wage-
cuts and intensified exploitation of the workers.
Even their very resistance to price declines pro-
longs and intensifies the crisis. As Stalin said in
a recent speech, "The capitalists are chopping off
the branch that supports them. Instead of escap-
ing the crisis, they are aggravating it, piling up
new causes for a still more severe crisis."

Consider the plight of the United States, home
of the trusts. Here 24 banks hold assets worth
more than those of 20,000 small banks; four great
financial interests control 95 % of the total output
of electrical power; the entire railroad system is
dominated by a half dozen New York banks. Yet
the whole industrial-financial machine is prostrate
in deepest crisis. Nor have the individual trusti-

i Press dispatches announce that the Brazilian government has
decided to burn 12,000,000 sacks of coffee and to cut down 400,-
000,000 coffee trees in the State of Sao Paulo.

158 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

fied industries been able to shield themselves. The
great automobile industry, erstwhile boast of
American industrialists, in which three of each
four cars are constructed by either Ford or Gen-
eral Motors, is working, as I write these lines, at
only 20% of capacity. Or take steel, with two
big corporations controlling 52% of the industry,
operating at only 20%. The oil industry, home
of great combinations, is likewise a picture of an-
archy, over-production and paralysis. The other
industries, whether trustified or not — coal, tex-
tiles, chemicals, etc. — are in a similar pickle. Also
the railroads, government-regulated and most
highly-monopolized of all American industries, ex-
perience the general economic crisis, with two-
thirds of their workers either totally unemployed
or working only part-time and with bankruptcy
knocking at the doors of many companies.

It is exactly in the most trustified countries —
the United States, Germany, Great Britain,
Japan — that the crisis bears down most heavily.

The trusts do not escape the laws of capitalist
society. They cannot get away from competition.
They compete against the untrustified sections of
their own industries; against other industries (coal
against oil and waterpower, railroads against auto-
trucks, etc.) and against the industries of other
countries. Besides, their whole position is under-
mined by the crisis in backward, hopelessly com-
petitive agriculture. But more important than all

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 159

this is the fact that the whole trend of the trusts is
to increase the exploitation of the workers and poor
farmers and thus to render these masses still less
able to buy back what they produce. The trusts
unavoidably widen the fatal gap between capitalist
production and distribution, the basic cause of the
crisis.

The cartel movement has had no better success
than the trusts in checking the economic crisis,
either in general or in individual industries. The
cartels have the same major objectives as the
trusts, to curtail production, boost prices, etc., but
their inner organization is more frail, even when
headed by "dictators" like Will Hayes and Dud-
ley Field Malone. In the present crisis the
cartels, so hopefully welcomed by capitalism gen-
erally, are breaking under the strain. It is no con-
tradiction for the capitalists of the various countries
to drastically rationalize their industries so that
they can the more effectively compete with each
other, and at the same time set up international
cartels presumably for the purpose of limiting
competition and production. This is because these
international cartels, in reality, are only new battle-
grounds for the competitors ; the fight for markets
goes on inside their limits, with the stronger groups
pushing the weaker ones to the wall, forcing them
to accept smaller production quotas, poorer mar-
kets, etc.

This is clearly reflected in the experience of the

160 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

famous European Steel and Iron Agreement,
signed in 1926. This organization faced not only
ruinous competition from without, from the steel
barons of Great Britain, Poland, etc., but also from
within. The New York Times, (Sept. 9, 1931),
says that the members of the cartel "engaged in
a free-for-all scramble for orders, cartel regula-
tions and prices being entirely disregarded." It
is not surprising therefore that this great cartel has
collapsed. Chadbourne's international sugar car-
tel is fast going the same road because of the same
disease. The New York Times, (Mar. 19, 1932),
states that the Chadbourne plan is now "practically
abandoned" because of incurable dissensions among
the sugar producers.

Mr. Chadbourne attaches very great impor-
tance to his cartel. He has declared that in this
attempt to limit the world production of sugar
and to boost prices "the capitalist system itself is
on trial." If so, then capitalism will surely be
found guilty and sentenced to death, for the cartel
movement cannot overcome the over-production
that causes the capitalist crisis. On the contrary,
as I. Lippincott says, the cartel "is a great stimu-
lant to further production, and it thus aggravates
the problem which it is designed to solve." 2 Sum-
marizing the experiences of the cartel movement,
a dispatch to the Scripps-Howard papers (Mar. 3,
1931) says: "European cartels in steel, rayon,

2 Economic Resources and Industries of the World, p. 55.

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 161

cement, aluminum and coal, and international
agreements in nitrates, sugar and coffee were
studied by the U. S. Government trade experts
in their examination of world price-fixing arrange-
ments. In no case was the objective of the cartel
attained in full and, in several instances, the entire
project was abandoned."

Viewing the general capitalist economic collapse
and the failure of all trust and cartel remedies to
cure it, The Course and Phases of the World Eco-
nomic Depression, a League of Nations publica-
tion, is forced to this lugubrious conclusion:

"When we consider the magnitude of the losses from
which the world suffers during a period of economic
stagnation similar to that through which the world is
now passing it is impossible not to be impressed by the
almost absolute failure of society up to the present to
devise any means by which such disasters may be averted."

The Movement for Capitalist Planned Economy

ALARMED on the one hand at the breakdown of the
chaotic capitalistic economy in the crisis and on
the other at the forging ahead of the Soviet Union
with its planned Socialist economy, defenders of
capitalism, especially in the United States, are rais-
ing a great clamor for a planned capitalist econ-
omy. "Give us a plan," they cry in every key and
in manifest confusion. Many of them frankly
state that it is a case of either a planned capitalist

162 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

economy or Communism. Prof. W. B. Donham
says in the New York Times of Mar. 15, 1931,
"Unless greater stability is achieved, it is doubtful
whether capitalist civilization can long endure."
The frightened Nicholas Murray Butler declares
in the New York Times of July 12, 1931 . . .
"the world today is in the grasp of the greatest
economic, financial, social and political series of
problems which have ever faced it in history. . .
The period through which we are passing is a period
like the fall of the Roman Empire, like the Re-
naissance, like the beginning of the political and
social revolution in England and France ; it is dif-
ferent from them all, is more powerful than them
all and holds the world more in its grasp than any
of them." Mr. Butler then cries out somewhat hys-
terically for "an international plan designed to show
that capitalism is a superior system to Communism."
Such clamor has resulted in a whole series of
"plans" being devised to stabilize the anarchistic
capitalist economy. The country is infested with
a plague of 5- and 10-year plans, and the deepening
crisis will bring more. Among them are the proj-
ects of Swope (General Electric), U. S. Cham-
ber of Commerce, Associated General Contractors
of America, Civic Federation, A. F. of L., La-
Follette, Stuart Chase, Norman Thomas, The
Forum,, Beard, Donham, etc., etc. These schemes
range from mere statistics-gathering and advice-

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 168

giving to drastic general reorganizations of in-
dustry.

What these "plans" usually have in common is
a demand for more active participation of the gov-
ernment in the trustification and control of indus-
try. Capitalist "planning" is a step still further
into State capitalism. The capitalist government,
as the instrument of the ruling class, always has
as its main function the furtherance of capitalist
industry and the increase of profits at the expense
of the workers, and it more and more directly in-
tervenes in industry, hut never was this interven-
tion so direct and far-reaching as the capitalist
"planners" now propose. The movement for capi-
talist "planning" is an effort to hasten the process
of monopolization with still more vigorous aid of
the government. It also tends in the general di-
rection of Fascism.

It is characteristic that the Social Fascist and
Fascist leaders of the Socialist party and A.F.
of L., together with many liberals, are advocates
of capitalist "planning." They try to prove that
the revolution is not necessary for an ordered
economy and prosperity for the workers. As
agents of finance capitalism, these elements always
manage to find "progress" in every new step that
the capitalists find necessary for the exploitation
of the workers. The A.F. of L. leaders' demand
now for "planning" and the abrogation of the anti-
trust laws is just as much in the service of the

164 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

employers as their support of the tariff, the ration-
alization of industry, the present wage-cut drive,
etc.

But these capitalistic economic "plans" must and
do fail. They are wrecked on the same reefs as
the trusts and cartels : viz., the inability of capital-
ism, whether "planned" or not, to sell its commodi-
ties in a market that lacks the wherewithal to buy
them; and the hopelessly competitive character of
the capitalist system. Capitalism "cannot eat its
cake and have it." "Planned" capitalist economy
cannot bridge over the basic economic and political
contradictions of capitalism. It is as fruitless as
capitalist "efforts" to end war.

In fact, capitalist economic "plans" are not
plans at all, in the sense of a fundamental control
of the whole resources and production of society, as
the Russians practice it. At most they are only
a crude sort of government regulation. Private
ownership of industry, exploitation of the work-
ers, production for profit, competitive scramble
for markets — all foundation stones of capitalist
economy — make totally impossible the orderly
balance between production and exchange and the
thorough mobilization of all economic forces, either
by agreement or compulsion, that is fundamentally
necessary for real social planning. In such
"plans" as that of Charles A. Beard in, America
Faces the Future, which is an example of modern
industrial utopianism, such basic objections to capi-

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 165

talist "planning" as profit-making and competition
are glossed over with a glib phrase or two and the
whole problem is considered merely as a technical
one, instead of primarily as one of class struggle.

By going in for "planned" production, capital-
ism would steal a leaf from the Soviet book, despite
the frenzied denials of Matthew Woll. Stuart
Chase says: "The American problem is to 'plan'
without revolution." But this will not work; it is
a case of the whole Soviet book or nothing.
Planned economy and capitalism are mutually ex-
clusive. Rubenstein correctly declares: "A plan
is in contradiction to the very structure of capital-
ism." 3 As Milyutin says : "Planned economy pre-
supposes the dictatorship of the proletariat, the
abolition of private property in the means of pro-
duction, the socialization of the means of produc-
tion — in other words : the victory of Socialism."
Only when the industries are socialized, when ex-
ploitation has ceased, when production and the
markets, freed of the profit motive, automatically
balance each other — that is, under Socialism — is
a genuine planned economy possible. The central
principle of Socialist planning cannot be grafted
onto the alien capitalist system. Socialism in the
Soviet Union works with a plan, because its whole
nature calls for planfulness and system. Capital-
ism has never developed a plan in any country,

s Science at the Crossroads, p. 21.

* International Press Correspondence, Nov. 5, 1931.

166 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

because it is in its very substance planless, com-
petitive, chaotic.

All the capitalist "planners" enthusiastically cite
the experience of the War Industries Board as a
glowing example of the success of their principle.
But they overlook one fundamental fact which
wrecks all their calculations. This is that during
the war period the question of finding a market for
the products of industry presented no problem.
Capitalism's task now is not to improve produc-
tion, which was all the War Industries Board did,
but to find markets for its commodities. The
movement now for capitalist "planning" will come
to a no better end than the even more enthusiastic
movement for the famous slogan, "Mass produc-
tion and high wages," in the "new capitalism" era.

But the capitalist "planners" have also passed
from the word to the deed. Only calamitous fail-
ure has been the result. In the United States
capitalist "planning' has proved no more effective
in checking the crisis than have the Economic
Councils of Germany and France. We have
already remarked the sad fate of Hoover's
"planned" building boom and his "planned" main-
tenance of high wages, but the most outstanding
examples of Hoover's "planning" are the adven-
tures of the Federal Farm Board in wheat and
cotton. These are comparable only to the exploits
of Jack, the giant-killer, or Sindbad, the sailor.

With wheat and cotton in deep crisis from

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 167

over-production, the Hoover government set out
blithely to "stabilize" these great crops, of course,
in the interests of the capitalist elements in agricul-
ture. The government's confidence was equalled
only by its arrogance and stupidity. It set up the
Federal Farm Board and gave it $500,000,000
with which to begin its great work of capitalist
"planning" by cutting production, regulating sales
and boosting prices.

Let us first see what happened to wheat: the
Farm Board bought some 330,000,000 bushels of
wheat and carried on a wide propaganda for re-
duced acreage, backed up by refusals of the banks
to make loans to small farmers. The general re-
sult was that the price of wheat dropped about 40
cents a bushel, production was 35,000,000 bushels
more in 1931 than in 1930, the unmarketable sur-
plus of wheat is larger than ever and the Farm
Board has thrown away vast sums of money.
Quoting Stone, the head of the Farm Board, the
New York Times, (Nov., 1931), says, "The Farm
Board's holdings of wheat on Oct. 31, totalling
189,656,187 bushels, represented an investment of
$1.17 a bushel . . . about $222,000,000. It was
worth on Oct. 31 about (57 cts. a bushel, WZF)
$120,000,000 or $102,000,000 less than cost."

Capitalist "planning," Hoover brand, made a no
less brilliant showing in cotton. Again, as in the
case of wheat, the market price of cotton has fallen
about 60%, many millions of dollars have been

168 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

squandered, and production, despite the Farm
Board's notorious slogan, "Plow under each third
row of cotton," has been increased 700,000 bales
over last year. Says the New York Times, fur-
ther quoting the "planner," Mr. Stone : "In cotton
the Farm Board on Oct. 31, held 1,310,789 bales,
representing on the same basis as wheat, an in-
vestment of 18 cents a pound, or about $120,000,-
000. The value of the cotton at quotations on
Oct. 31, was about (6 cents a pound, WZF) $45,-
000,000, or a loss of $75,000,000."

These official figures of the Farm Board show
a loss to the government of $177,000,000. But
this by no means covers all; it accounts only for
the devaluation of the stocks now on hand. There
should be added another $100,000,000 or so on ac-
count of the vast quantities of wheat and cotton
sold for less than the purchase price. Besides,
there are the many hundreds of millions lost by the
farmers themselves.

Thus operates capitalist "planning" even under
powerful American imperialism. The wheat and
cotton farmers have been impoverished to the point
of pauperization; the crisis of over-production has
been intensified; hundreds of millions of dollars
have been handed over to the bankers and specu-
lators in wheat and cotton. And meanwhile, as
the storehouses are bursting with the unsaleable
wheat and cotton, millions of unemployed workers
and their families clamor in vain for bread and

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 169

clothes. All this is a clear example of the suicide
economics of capitalism, of the forces that impel
the workers and poor farmers towards the estab-
lishment of a Soviet United States.

The Question of an Organized Capitalism

THE DEVELOPMENT of the movement for capitalist
"planning" raises afresh the question of whether
or not an organized capitalist system is possible,
for proposals of a "planned" capitalist economy
are proposals of an "organized capitalism." Here
the Social Fascists come forward in full panoply.
They are the special champions of the theory of
organized capitalism, although the present crisis
has given them a sad jolt. Hilferding, (Arbeiter
Zeitung, Vienna, Jan. 1, 1930), says: "The year
of 1928 was a year of powerful development of
organized capitalism. A new capitalist era com-
menced in 1929. Modern capitalism is overcom-
ing and removing everything which made for the
anarchy of capitalist production."

The theory of organized capitalism is found best
developed in Hilf erding's and Kautsky's conception
of super-imperialism, and it is a foundation premise
of Social Fascism in general. Kautsky and other
Social Fascist theoreticians hold that the process
of capitalist trustification is overcoming and will
continue to overcome the contradictions of capital-
ism. That is, eventually trustification will become

170 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

world-wide, thus at once liquidating the economic
crisis, abolishing the class struggle, and dissolving
the war conflicts between the rival imperialist na-
tions into an organized and monopolized world
system of production and distribution. Mean-
while, as this develops, capitalism will at the same
time, by a process of purchase by the ever-more
democratic State, be gradually turned into a system
of Socialism. This is the theory of the peaceful
evolution of capitalism into Socialism.

But this whole theory of organized capitalism
goes contrary to the most basic development of
capitalism. The capitalist system cannot be "or-
ganized"; it is fundamentally competitive and
chaotic. An ordered, balanced social system is
incompatible with the private ownership of the
industries and land and with production for profit.
Monopolization, instead of diminishing the contra-
dictions of the capitalist system, is increasing and
deepening them. While trustification undoubt-
edly brings a modicum of regulation and system
within the confines of its direct organization, it at
the same time, aggravates the conflicts within capi-
talism as a whole. With the development of mo-
nopolization, in this period of imperialism, of the
decline of capitalism and of the rise of Socialism,
the collisions increase in severity between trusts
and untrustified industry, between the trusts them-
selves, between industries as such, between the vari-
ous imperialist nations, between the producers and

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 171

the exploiters, and between the decaying capitalist
system and the advancing Soviet Union. This
process of growing conflict and struggle is thus
stated in the Program of the Communist Inter-
national:

"The development of capitalism, and particularly the
imperialist epoch of its development, reproduces the
fundamental contradictions of capitalism upon an in-
creasingly magnified scale. Competition among small
capitalists ceases, only to make way for competition be-
tween big capitalists ; where competition between big capi-
talists subsides, it flares up between gigantic combinations
of capitalist magnates and their governments; local and
national crises become transformed into world crises af-
fecting a number of countries and, subsequently, into
world crises ; local wars give way to wars between coali-
tions of states and world wars ; the class struggle changes
from isolated actions of single groups of workers into
nation-wide conflicts and subsequently, into an inter-
national struggle of the world proletariat against the
world bourgeoisie. Finally, two main forces are or-
ganizing against the organized might of finance capital
— on the one hand the workers in the capitalist states,
on the other hand, the victims of oppression of foreign
capital, the masses of the people in the colonies, marching
under the leadership and hegemony of the international
revolutionary movement."

The decisive trend in capitalism is towards the
sharpening of its contradictions. Nor will this be
overcome by the process of trustification. As the
tendency develops to "organize," that is, to trustify
sections of capitalist economy, this tendency is out-

172 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

run by the counter-tendency to sharpen and deepen
the antagonisms within the capitalist system and
between it and the new Socialist system of the
Soviet Union. In short, the very process of capi-
talist monopolization speeds capitalist society ever
faster along the road to imperialist war and pro-
letarian revolution. Lenin thus analyses capital-
ist development:

"There is no doubt that the development is going in
the direction of a single world trust that will swallow
up all enterprises and all States without exception. But
the development in this direction is proceeding under
such stress, with such a tempo, with such contradictions,
conflicts, and convulsions — not only economical, but also
political, national, etc., etc. — that before a single world
trust will be reached, before the respective national
finance capitalist will have formed a world union of
'ultra-imperialism,* imperialism will inevitably explode,
capitalism will turn into its opposite."

(b) Futile Efforts to Quench the Class Struggle

THE MAJOR social contradiction of the capitalist
system is the conflict in interest between the own-
ing capitalist class and the producing working
class. This gives rise to class struggle, the capi-
talists always seeking to more intensely exploit the
workers, and the workers struggling to retain the
products of their labor. The class struggle, as we
have already seen, becomes ever sharper with the

6 Preface to Bukharin's Imperialism and World Economy, p. 14.

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 173

intensification of the general crisis of capitalism,
and it eventually culminates in the proletarian
revolution.

Necessarily, the capitalist class has always had
as a fundamental objective the liquidation or soft-
ening of this revolutionary contradiction. But the
facts demonstrate that it is proving no more suc-
cessful in accomplishing this than it is in its ef-
forts to wipe out the basic economic contradiction
of capitalism, the conflict between the capitalist
modes of production and distribution. In spite of
all the efforts of the capitalists to quench the class
struggle, by damping down or beating out the
workers' opposition, it flares up ever broader, more
vigorously and more menacing to capitalism.

Throughout the capitalist world the trend of the
exploiters is towards Fascism; that is, to push
through their offensive against the working class
by policies of extreme demagogy and violence.
The speed of the development of Fascism and the
forms that it takes in the various countries depend
upon the extent to which the capitalist crisis has
progressed. Fascism develops along two main
channels; that is, open Fascism and Social Fas-
cism.

In Italy and some of the Balkan countries,
where the revolutionary crisis early became acute,
Fascism came into power by the violent seizure of
the State power, followed by the wholesale smash-
ing of workers' unions, cooperatives, political

174 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

parties, the complete liquidation of bourgeois de-
mocracy, the setting up of government trade
unions, etc. In other countries the capitalists, ap-
proaching the crisis at a somewhat slower pace,
follow, at least at the outset, the "dry road" or
"legal" way to Fascism. By this process of fas-
ciszation the Bruening government in Germany is
gradually developing the Fascist dictatorship; the
MacDonald government in Great Britain is going
in the same direction; Japan is openly menaced by
Fascism; and in the United States many Fascist
tendencies are in evidence, as exampled by the dic-
tatorial methods of Hoover in the question of un-
employment relief, etc.; by the decline in prestige
of parliamentary government and the demand for
a "strong man" dictator; by the demand of the
American Legion convention for a "peace-time
National Council of Defense"; by the appearance
of many Fascist "planning" schemes (Swope,
Woll, etc.), and by the wave of unpunished lynch-
ings, wholesale arrest and deportation of militant
workers, etc. One of the most basic features of
this trend of world capitalism towards Fascism is
the gradual fasciszation of the conservative trade
unions and Socialist parties.

From Social Reformism to Social Fascism

IT HAS always been a policy of the capitalist class,
especially in the imperialist countries, to split and

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 175

weaken the working class by making certain con-
cessions to the skilled workers. This provided the
base of Social Reformism. The Socialist parties
of the world and such trade unions as the Ameri-
can Federation of Labor fitted themselves into this
bosses' strategy, seeking to develop the skilled
workers as a privileged aristocracy of labor. They
based their organization, economic and political,
upon the skilled workers, ignoring or openly be-
traying the unskilled workers, as a thousand
sold-out strikes testify. They cultivated illusions
among the skilled workers that their interests lie
in collaboration with the bourgeoisie rather than
in class struggle of the workers. Social Reform-
ism was and is a tool of the capitalist class in its
struggle against the working class. The Social
Reformists are in reality, as Lenin called them,
"agents of the bourgeoisie in the ranks of the
workers."

The hey-day of Social Reformism was during
the early, "peaceful" stage of capitalist develop-
ment and in the first phase of imperialism. This
general period may be said to have closed with the
beginning of the World War. In this period,
with the world capitalist system generally on the
upgrade, the capitalists, especially in United
States, England and Germany, could and did
make many concessions to the skilled workers.
Few of these, however, seeped down to the un-
skilled and semi-skilled, who remained in a state

176 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

of poverty. Upon this economic foundation So-
cial Reformism built for itself a strong mass fol-
lowing among the workers.

But the development of the general crisis of
capitalism has changed the complexion though not
the basic role of the Social Reformistic "lieuten-
ants of capital." The employers, trying to find a
way out of their difficulties and to preserve their
profits at the expense of the workers, intensify
their wage-cut drive, reduction of unemployment
benefits, etc.; not even the skilled workers, al-
though they are partly shielded, escaping the rapid
downward trend. The old system of concessions
to the skilled workers, the basis of Social Reform-
ism, becomes increasingly narrowed down and is
succeeded by more direct and rigorous methods of
repression.

Adapting themselves to the needs of the em-
ployers, the reformist Socialist and trade union
leaders have developed their movement into an
organ of the bosses for the Fascist repression
and intensified exploitation of the working class.
They have practically grafted the Social Democ-
racy and the conservative unions onto the capitalist
State and the employers' exploitation machinery.
They devote to capitalism their long-established
prestige as workers' leaders, their strong organi-
zational control over the masses, and their unques-
tioned demagogic skill in covering up their services
to capitalism with pleas that it is all necessary in

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 177

the building of Socialism. Where necessary they
do not hesitate to use open violence against the
revolutionary toilers. The policy of the Social
Democracy is basically that of Fascism; the beat-
ing back of the proletarian revolution, the saving
of capitalism and the profits of the employers at
the expense of the workers. The principal differ-
ence is that Social Democracy hides its Fascism
under a mask of Marxian Socialism. Thus, in the
period of the decline of capitalism, Social Reform-
ism becomes Social Fascism.

The Fasciszation of the American Federation of

Labor

IN THE A.F. of L. the process of fasciszation is
far advanced. In fact, the top leadership of this
organization, the Greens, Wolls, Lewises, etc., are
already practically open-Fascist. They are brazen
defenders of capitalism. They have become the
chief strike-breaking agency of the employers.
To this end they work hand-in-glove with the
Hoover government, the American Legion, the Ku
Klux Klan, the National Civic Federation, the
Chambers of Commerce, the churches, and all and
sundry other institutions of the employers for the
exploitation of the workers. Their policy is to
make the trade unions more company-union-like
than the company unions themselves. Politically
illiterate and with the sycophancy typical of para-

178 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

sites, these leaders take their "opinions" ready-
made from the most reactionary sections of the
bourgeoisie. They greedily lap up every mess of
capitalist economics and politics that their masters
set before them. Developing Fascism in the United
States has a main foundation in the leadership of
the American Federation of Labor. Their sys-
tem of craft unionism, maintained as against in-
dustrial unionism to prevent unity of action by the
workers and to furnish additional jobs to officials,
is a shameless method of union scabbery. Their
endorsement of election candidates of the capital-
ist parties, or "reward-your-friends" policy, is a
plain sell-out of the working class. Their support
of the rationalization of industry is part of the
speed-up program of the bosses. Their systematic
betrayal of the Negroes, women and young work-
ers dovetails into the employers' special exploita-
tion of these sections of the workers. Their long
years of peddling the interests of the unskilled
workers and their breaking up of attempts of these
workers to organize constitutes the greatest of all
their crimes against the working class. They are
saturated with graft — racketeering was born in
the A.F. of L. With their huge salaries, ranging
from $10,000 to $20,000 yearly or as much as those
of United States governors, senators, etc., they
have nothing in common with the workers in their
way of living and thinking. So faithful a servant
of capitalism is the A.F. of L. leadership that, if

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 179

one wants to know its policy in any field of politics
or economics, all that is necessary is to find out the
policy of the bosses and you have the answer.

The present tasks of the A.F. of L. leadership,
dictated by the employers, are to defeat the de-
mand of the workers for unemployment insurance
and relief, to push through the employers' wage-
cutting campaign, to advance the preparations for
imperialist war, to beat back the advance of the
Trade Union Unity League and the revolutionary
minorities in the reformist unions.

In the question of unemployment the A.F. of L.
leadership sinks to the greatest depths of cynical
betrayal of the workers. The Vancouver, 1931,
convention of the A.F. of L., re-affirming the ex-
isting policy, said: "Compulsory unemployment
insurance legislation such as is now in effect in
Great Britain and Germany would be unsuited to
our economic and political requirements and are
unsatisfactory to American workmen." When
Green, Woll and Co. say this they speak for their
capitalist masters, not for the workers. The A.F.
of L. convention which could adopt such a decision
was made up of 90% high-paid officials; the work-
ers had no voice or representation. The A.F. of
L. membership, who favor unemployment insur-
ance, have never in any way been consulted or
given an opportunity to express their opinion on
the question. The A.F. of L. leadership, either
openly or by their silence, have endorsed every

180 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

attack of the police upon unemployed demon-
strations. The millions of unemployed workers,
destitute of unemployment insurance and in a con-
dition of semi-starvation, have the A.F. of L. very
much to thank for their present plight. It may
be that under the growing mass pressure many
A.F. of L. leaders will be forced to tip their hat
to "unemployment insurance" of the Groves Law
type, (half a dozen governors having endorsed it),
but this demagogy will not change their real op-
position. The A.F. of L. leaders are a central pillar
of the Hoover program of starving the unem-
ployed.

The A.F. of L. leaders are also a principal in-
strument of the bosses for cutting the workers'
wages. During the past two years, despite the
Hoover-Green no-wage-cut agreement, the wages
of the workers in practically every industry have
been slashed and the A.F. of L. has not waged a
single major strike against this offensive. Where
the militancy of the workers has forced strikes,
(Ohio miners, needle trades, etc.), these have been
betrayed into means for accomplishing wage-cuts.
Agreeing with the bosses that the standards of
the workers must come down, the A.F. of L. leaders
have adopted a policy of "voluntary" wage-cuts.
They are accepting cuts off-hand in the building,
textile, printing, clothing and other industries all
over the country, and glorying in them as victories.
Matthew Woll called the recent "voluntary"

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 181

cut of the railroad workers, which was a most
shameful sell-out, "an achievement such as we
have never before witnessed in the United States."
In their wage-cutting program the A.F. of L.
leaders do not hesitate to cut the wages of organ-
ized workers even below those of the unorganized.
In the Colorado mines of the Rocky Mountain
Fuel Co. the U.M.W. of A. leaders "voluntarily"
gave up 50% of the workers' pay in order to enable
that company to out-compete its competitors. In
West Virginia, the U.M.W. of A. leader Van
Bittner declared that he would "out scab the
scabs," and signed an agreement with the Purs-
glove Company, cutting the already starvation
wages of its 1600 workers from 30 to 22 cents
per ton, thereby reducing them far below the
unorganized miners of the vicinity. The Ameri-
can Federation of Full Fashioned Hosiery Work-
ers, (U.T.W.), in the Fall of 1931, accepted a
cut of 35% to 45%, shamelessly announcing that
its purpose was to undercut the production costs
of the non-union mills and to drive them out of
business. In all this wage-cutting campaign no
unions have been more active than the Socialist-
controlled needle trades organizations.

Not only does the A.F. of L. take the initiative
in forcing through wage-cuts, but it also actively
breaks the resistance of the workers, the unorgan-
ized or those united in the Trade Union Unity
League, when they strike against reductions of

182 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

their standards, examples of this being the recent
strikes in Western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Law-
rence, Paterson, New York, etc. It used to be
that when the employers broke strikes of their
workers they called in such professional scab-
herders as Farley, Pinkerton, the Feltz-Baldwins,
etc., but now they use the Greens, Lewises, Doaks,
Schlessingers, Hillmans, etc.

Notoriously, the A.F. of L. leaders are milita-
ristic jingoes, and support every phase of the im-
perialists' war program. They are rabid enemies
of the Soviet Union. The A.F. of L. convention
poisonously declared: "We regard the Soviet re-
gime in Russia as the most unscrupulous, most anti-
social institution in the world today. Between it
and our form of political and social organization,
there can be no compromise of any kind." Their
hatred of the U.S.S.R. is a class hatred, as is that of
the employers. They fear the revolution like all
other exploiters of labor, usually more acutely than
even the capitalists themselves.

Naturally, to enforce in the unions the poli-
cies of wage-cuts, starvation of the unemployed,
speed-up, etc., more and more use has to be made
of Fascist methods of control of these organiza-
tions. Democracy, never vigorous in the A.F. of
L. and railroad Brotherhoods, has now been prac-
tically wiped out. The organizations are domi-
nated from top to bottom by bureaucrats and

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 183

gangsters; including the "Socialist" unions. The
rank and file have little or nothing to say on vital
questions of policy. Union elections are a farce,
the ruling cliques stealing as many votes as they
may require. Often they even refuse to put the
opposition candidates on the ballot. Conventions
are packed with administration henchmen. The
union journals are closed to all serious discussion.
And when the workers object to this growing Fas-
cist regime they face gangsterism and expulsion
from the organizations.

The employers directly assist the reactionaries
in controlling the unions. Rebellious workers in
the unions are, upon the proposal of the union
leaders, blacklisted from the industries. More
than ever the check-off is used to hold the work-
ers in the organizations by force (anthracite,
needle trades, textiles, etc.). In Illinois, for ex-
ample, the miners have led several revolts against
the U.M.W.A. but are still compelled, by the
check-off, to remain members.

Fascism everywhere seeks to amalgamate the
trade unions with the State, so that the workers
may be the more effectively controlled, Musso-
lini's "trade unions" being actual State organs.
Gradually the A.F. of L. and railroad unions are
becoming Statized, being already practically the
official government unions. Their foreign policy
dovetails completely with that of American im-
perialism and obediently follows all the windings

184. TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

of the State Department. Significantly, Mr.
Hoover, together with a flock of governors, sena-
tors, mayors, generals, etc., went to the Boston,
(1930), convention to tell the A.F. of L. leaders
to fight against unemployment insurance. And
during the 1931 coal strike of the National Min-
ers Union in Western Pennsylvania, President
Hoover, Secretary Doak, and Governors Pinchot
and White actively interfered to break the strike,
assisting and often calling upon the coal operators
to rebuild the U.M.W.A. and arranging confer-
ences to this effect.

Between the police and the A.F. of L. bureau-
crats there is a close working arrangement. At
the top Matthew Woll and the Department of
Justice cooperate in the issuance of their periodic
joint "red scares"; at the bottom, the lesser officials
turn the names of revolutionary workers over to
the police. The Department of Labor, when 35
members of Local 28 of the Sheet Metal Workers
got out an injunction against their crooked offi-
cials, sent its agents to terrorize these workers as
"Reds," (New York World-Telegram, Apr. 1,
1932) this being a direct support of A.F. of L.
racketeer leaders by the Federal government.
Nor do the courts fail in protecting the A.F. of
L. officials against attacks by the workers. They
issue injunctions against the TUUL unions on be-
half of the A.F. of L. And in Southern Illinois,
Gebert, Tash, Frankfeld, et al., were indicted for

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 185

criminal syndicalism, being charged by the State
with "maliciously, unlawfully and knowingly com-
bining, federating," etc., "to injure the character
of the United Mine Workers of America."

The Fasciszation of the Socialist Party

TRAVELING to Fascism, the Social Democrats, in-
ternationally as well as in this country, are fulfill-
ing every task assigned them by the employers.
In summing up their intellectual fasciszation, the
Program of the Communist International, says:

"In the sphere of theory, Social Democracy has utterly
and completely betrayed Marxism, having traversed the
road from revision to complete liberal bourgeois reform-
ism and avowed social-imperialism; it has substituted in
place of the Marxian theory of the contradictions of
capitalism, the bourgeois theory of its harmonious de-
velopment ; it has pigeon-holed the theory of crises and
of the pauperization of the proletariat; it has turned
the flaming and menacing theory of class struggle into
prosaic advocacy of class peace; it has exchanged the
theory of growing class antagonisms for the petty bour-
geois fairy tale about the 'democratization' of capital;
in place of the theory of the inevitability of war under
capitalism it has substituted the bourgeois deceit of
pacifism and the lying propaganda of 'ultra-imperialism';
it has changed the theory of the revolutionary downfall
of capitalism for the counterfeit coinage of 'sound' capi-
talism transforming itself peacefully into Socialism; it
has replaced revolution by evolution; the destruction of
the bourgeois State by its active upbuilding, the theory

186 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

of proletarian dictatorship by the theory of coalition
with the bourgeoisie, the doctrine of international soli-
darity— by preaching defense of the imperialist father-
land; for Marxian dialectical materialism it has sub-
stituted the idealist philosophy and is now engaged in
picking up the crumbs of religion that fall from the
table of the bourgeoisie. '*

The practice of the Socialist parties and trade
unions conforms to this Fascist theoretical degen-
eration. There have been no demands made upon
them by capitalism in crisis which they have not
obeyed. When the capitalists of the various coun-
tries called upon them to organize the great World
War they responded by identifying everywhere
their interests with those of their national bour-
geoisie and by mobilizing the workers for the
slaughter. And ever since they have worked with
their capitalist masters to help them prepare the
next war. In Great Britain the MacDonald "So-
cialist" government maintained intact the great
war machine of British imperialism; in Germany
the Social Fascists voted for the rebuilding of the
German navy; in France they prepared the in-
famous universal military service law now in force ;
in Poland, Czecho- Slovakia and many other coun-
tries they vote the war budgets. Everywhere they
are the special decoy ducks of capitalist pacifism,
the shield of imperialist war.

In the war plans of the capitalist nations against
the Soviet Union the Social Democrats play a lead-

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 187

ing role. They scoff at the danger of capitalist
war against the Soviet Union and thus disarm the
workers' defense; they make the capitalist war ap-
pear as a fight against autocracy in the U.S.S.R.
The Social Fascists hate the Soviet Union because
they see in it the living refutation of their whole
policy, a menacing threat to the capitalist system
of which they are the most profound theoretical
and practical defenders. They have never hesi-
tated, (in Georgia and elsewhere), to take up arms
against the Soviet Union. The exposures in the
recent political trials in Moscow showed that the
Second International is working hand-in-glove
with the French imperialists in preparing armed
intervention against the U.S.S.R. As a recent
resolution of the Communist International says:
"The Social Democracy has turned itself into a
shock-brigade of world imperialism which is pre-
paring for war against the U.S.S.R."

The special task of the Social Fascists is to dis-
credit the Soviet Union among the workers. As
we have seen, they are the most skilled in building
up arguments against the Soviet Union, covering
their sophistries with a cloak of pseudo-Marxism.
They take up every capitalist anti- Soviet lie and
assiduously propagate it among the workers.
These they alternate with hypocritical pretensions
of friendship, knowing that the masses are sympa-
thetic to the U.S.S.R. A few quotations will show

188 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

their malignant attacks upon the Russian revolu-
tion and their true attitude towards it :

"Russian Soviet imperialism, which has robbed a whole
series of non-Russian peoples of their rights and prin-
ciples, is striving to extend its rule still further and to
cause trouble between other countries. This is the great-
est danger of war.'96

"The Soviet Government has been the greatest disaster
and calamity that has ever occurred to the Socialist
movement. Let us dissociate ourselves from the Soviet
government." 7

"I agree in the main with Prof. Beard's vigorous state-
ment: 'One thing, however, is certain; the Russian gov-
ernment rules by tyranny and terror, with secret police,
espionage and arbitrary executions.' '

In the great revolutionary upheavals following
the World War the Social Fascists saved Euro-
pean capitalism. In Italy they betrayed the revo-
lution into the hands of Mussolini. In Germany,
in their efforts to preserve the capitalist system,
they shot down thousands of revolutionary work-
ers. All this was done in the name of fighting
for Socialism. The MacDonald "Socialist" gov-
ernment simply displayed its true Social Fascist
character by shooting and jailing thousands of
revolutionary workers and peasants in India. The
Social Fascists were the main force in the speed-

6 Vorwearts, official organ of the German Social Democratic Party.

7 Morris Hillquit, American Socialist leader, New Leader, Feb.
4, 1928.

8 Norman Thomas, As I See It, p. 93.

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 189

up, rationalization movement, their real leader
being Henry Ford, not Karl Marx.

Now again, when capitalism is trying to find a
way out of its deep crisis by reducing the standards
of the workers, its main allies are the Social Fas-
cists. The world Social Democracy is not better
than a strike-breaking, wage-cutting, dole-slashing
tool of the employers. In every capitalist country
the Social Fascists are cooperating closely with the
capitalists, accepting as their working principle
that in the crisis the workers' living conditions must
come down. In the United States J. P. Morgan
speaks over the radio for the starvation, "block-aid"
system, and so does Norman Thomas. In Great
Britain, with the aid of the Labor government, the
bosses have deeply cut the wages in every industry,
besides making sharp reductions in the State unem-
ployment insurance. In Germany the Bruening
and other capitalist governments, all the while re-
ceiving the active support of the Social Demo-
cratic party, have cut the wages of the workers and
the benefits of the jobless to starvation levels.

The Socialist parties of the world are the third
parties of capitalism. They do not fight for even
the most elementary demands of the workers.
They are a part of the capitalist machinery for
taking the bread out of the mouths of the workers
and their families, the principal barrier to the revo-
lution. That is why in Great Britain, Germany

190 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

and other countries the capitalists have supported
Social Fascists to head their governments. In
every case their record has been one of subservience
to the program of the exploiters. In practice
their policy of the gradual building of Socialism
has resolved itself simply into a desperate effort
to keep the breath of life in capitalism. Their so-
called nationalization of industry is only a covert
aid to capitalist trustification. In no country have
they achieved the slightest progress towards So-
cialism, or even made serious proposals looking in
that direction. The Liberal English writer, Rat-
cliffe, says in Current History, (Dec., 1931) : "The
first nominally Socialist Prime Minister of Eng-
land has at no time proposed a single Socialist
measure." The same may be said with equal truth
of every "Socialist" Prime Minister in every coun-
try. Even Norman Thomas has to grudgingly
admit that "the record of parliamentary govern-
ments by Socialist parties in Europe is no record
of thrilling achievement." Manuilsky states the
case correctly when he calls the Social Democracy,
"a party more reactionary and counter-revolution-
ary than the bourgeois parties were in the past
when capitalism was still on the upgrade."

The Social Democracy not only increasingly ap-
plies more Fascist methods itself against the work-
ers, but it further serves its capitalist masters by
preparing the ground for open Fascism. In Italy

» America's Way Out, p. 181.

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 191

the betrayal of the great metal strike by the So-
cialists opened the door to Mussolini. In Austria
the Social Democracy disarms the workers before
the advancing Fascism. In Great Britain, by
their betrayal of the great general strike and by
the debacle of the Labor government, the Social
Fascists threw demoralization into the ranks of the
workers and petty bourgeois sympathizers, giving
direct encouragement to Fascism. In Germany
the Social Fascist leaders are clearing the way
for Fascism through their theory and practice of
"the lesser evil/' With the argument that the
starvation capitalist system is a "lesser evil" than
the dictatorship of the proletariat they support the
Bruening government, with its wholesale wage-
cuts, suppression of the workers' rights and pro-
gram of gradual fasciszation. Under the name of
Socialism they call upon the workers to vote for
the monarchist, von Hindenburg. In many places
they join hands with the Hitlerites and police for
armed attacks on the Communists. To the Social
Fascists the major danger is the Communist revo-
lution; to defeat this the end justifies the means.
The "fight" between Social Fascism and Fas-
cism is so much "sound and fury signifying
nothing." The two movements are blood-brothers.
Manuilsky says: "Fascism and Social Fascism are
two aspects of one and the same bulwark of bour-
geois dictatorship," and Stalin says: "Fascism is a
militant organization of the bourgeoisie resting

192 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

upon the active support of Social Democracy."
Their quarrel is only a case of friction between two
methods of repressing the workers, between two
sets of capitalist agents fighting for the fleshpots
of office and control. The Social Fascists would
maintain the semblance of capitalist democracy as
the best means of forestalling the revolution and
they would be its administrators ; whereas the Fas-
cists would sweep aside this fake democracy and
its champions and proceed to more direct methods
of repression. But an accommodation of these
conflicting ideas and interests is being arrived at
by the gradual fasciszation of the State and of the
mass organizations of the Social Democrats. In
due season the Social Fascist leaders, in the name
of Socialism, will join with the Hitlerites in shoot-
ing down the revolutionary workers. It is because
of the essential unity of Fascism and Social Fas-
cism that Hamilton Fish, one of the most conscious
Fascists in this country, could enthusiastically en-
dorse Norman Thomas for office in the 1931
elections.10 The Mussolinis, Pilsudskis, Briands,
and MacDonalds are only fully-matured Social
Democrats.

The record of the Socialist Party of the United
States is altogether in line with that of its brother
parties in Europe. It has undergone the same
ideological degeneration in the direction of Fas-
cism. It supported the imperialist program of

10 New York Herald-Tribune, Nov. 2, 1931.

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 193

MacDonald and the endorsement of the Bruening
government. It advocated the whole capitalist
rationalization of industry, and class collaboration,
removing from its program all reference to the
class struggle. Now, naturally, it comes forward
for capitalist "planning." In Reading and Mil-
waukee, Socialist strongholds and long notorious
for their low wages and open-shop conditions, the
same starvation program for the unemployed pre-
vails, the same jailing of unemployed demonstra-
tors as in Mayor Walker's New York. The
Socialist party has cemented its alliance with the
A.F. of L. leadership and carries out the same line
of wage-cutting and strike-breaking against the
revolutionary unions, but with more skillful strat-
egy and demagogy. The Socialist-controlled New
York needle trades unions, saturated with cor-
ruption and gangsterism, are just as much at the
service of the employers as any unions in the whole
A.F. of L. Wherever it is to be found, the So-
cialist party, under its false-face of working class
phrases, is a maid-of-all-work for the capitalist
class.

The "'Left" Social Fascists

THE DEEPENING of the crisis and the growing revo-
lutionization of the masses is accompanied by a
strong development of radical phrase-mongering
on the part of many groups of open and covert de-
fenders of capitalism. This demagogy is part of

194 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

the capitalist offensive against the workers. Its
aim is to delude the workers with promises of dras-
tic relief, while at the same time holding them tied
in practical policy to the basic capitalist program
of exploitation. It is a means to prevent the
masses from following the leadership of the Com-
munists.

Of such demagogues the Fascists are outstanding
examples. Before Mussolini seized power his
program was extremely "radical," containing de-
mands for a republic, suppression of all chambers
of commerce and stock companies, confiscation of
church properties, nationalization of the war in-
dustries, etc., all of which he completely repudiated
in practice. At the present time Hitler is trying
to carry out the same Mussolini strategy, to de-
ceive the German masses with pretenses of radi-
calism as a screen for the naked capitalist
dictatorship and exploitation he has in store for
them. The new-found radicalism of the Roose-
velts, Pinchots, LaFollettes, Murphys, Father
Coxes, etc., is of essentially the same stripe in this
country, so much empty demagogy to win a mass
following of the discontented.

The Social Fascists are still more dangerous mas-
ters at this demagogic art. As we have seen they
have, under pretense of fighting for Socialism,
backed up every plan that capitalism has put for-
ward for saving itself and more intensely exploiting
the toilers. Under the fig-leaf of Socialism they

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 195

supported the World War, the Versailles Treaty,
the Dawes and Young Plans, the Kellogg Pact,
the Chinese butcher, Chang Kai Shek, and the In-
dian faker, Gandhi. Even as these lines are being
written, they are working together with the Span-
ish coalition government to shoot down the heroic
revolt of the Spanish workers, (Daily Worker,
Jan. 23, 1932). Nor are the Greens and Wolls
anything lacking in demagogic ability, with their
blather about the 5-hour day, their vague talk of
"revolution if something is not done," etc.

But the most insidious and dangerous to the
workers of all this crop of demagogues are the so-
called "left" Social Fascists. The substance of
their activities is, while giving practical support to
the right Social Fascists, to criticize them in the
name of the revolution. They are the radical
phrase-mongers par excellence. Their objective
task is the confusion of the most advanced elements
of the workers and therefore the breaking up of
serious movements against the capitalists and their
reactionary labor henchmen. Throughout the Sec-
ond International there are such groupings, in-
cluding the Maxtonites in Great Britain, the
"left" Social Democrats in Germany, the various
renegade Communist grouplets, etc. Trotzky
belongs to this general category. The harm of
such elements is typically illustrated by Trotzky's
present denial of an immediate war danger between

196 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

Japan and the U.S.S.R., while at the same time he
poses as an ultra-revolutionist.

During the post-war revolutionary upheavals in
Germany and other countries such pseudo-left ele-
ments sprang up, forming a separate world or-
ganization, the so-called 2^ International. These
"lefts," despite many radical phrases, always
supported the right Social Democrats against the
Communists, thereby doing much to break up the
revolutionary attacks of the workers upon capi-
talism. After the workers were defeated the
"lefts" amalgamated with the Second Inter-
national, of which, at all times, they were essen-
tially a specialized part. Now, in this great crisis,
they are attempting to come forth and repeat their
treacherous role of 1918-23.

In the United States the principal representa-
tive of this insidious pseudo-revolutionary tendency
is the Conference for Progressive Labor Action, or
the so-called Muste group. This is made up of
miscellaneous "progressive" petty trade union
bureaucrats, remnants of the old Labor party
movements, liberals and Brookwood intellectuals,
dilettante churchmen, social workers, etc. Its
chief political expression is the "left" Stanley
group in the Socialist party and its principal activi-
ties are on the trade union field. Such Socialists
as Thomas and Maurer flirt with the movement.
On the fringes of the Muste group are the rene-
gade Communist groups of Lore, Lovestone,

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 197

Cannon and Weisbord. They serve to give the
whole tendency a more "red" tinge with their pre-
tense at Communism; but their practice dovetails
with the Muste group. The "left" Social Fascists
are in reality specialized troops of the reactionary
bureaucrats for struggle against the revolutionary
sections of the working class.

The line of the Muste group is typical of such
tendencies the world over. While criticising the
betrayals of the A.F. of L. leaders and the So-
cialist party, they nevertheless give them practical
support. They are bitter enemies of the Com-
munist party and the Trade Union Unity League.
They are special opponents of the policy of in-
dependent revolutionary unions, seeking to draw
the unorganized workers under the control of the
American Federation of Labor. They are the
loyal "opposition" within the A.F. of L. They
talk of starting a more radical Socialist party as a
rival to the Communist party.

In its short life of about three years the Muste
group has clearly shown the unity of its basic
policy with that of the A.F. of L. How this
"radical" group makes a division of labor with
the A.F. of L. leaders is typically illustrated by the
campaign of the A.F. of L. to "organize" the
Southern textile workers recently. On the one
hand, Mr. Green, accompanied by an efficiency en-
gineer, Jeffrey Browne, proposed to "organize" the
textile workers by offering to speed them still more

198 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

and to kill off radicalism among them. Along this
line he spoke to many Southern Chambers of Com-
merce and employers' associations. "The policies
he advocated," says the Memphis Commercial Ap-
peal, "might have come with propriety from the
President of the American Banking Association."
On the other hand, the Muste group got into action
to help Green control the workers within his reac-
tionary scheme. Muste grew enthusiastic over the
campaign, called upon the workers to give the
A.F. of L. misleaders an organizing fund of $1,-
000,000, sent his speakers to talk radical to the
workers at the mill gates, and his organizers to
play a shameful role in the final strike sell-outs.
Thus this "progressive" wing of the A.F. of L.
cooperated perfectly with the top bureaucracy to
defeat the militant movement of the Southern
workers and to keep them away from the revolu-
tionary National Textile Workers Union.

The recent Lawrence strike was another typical
example of the Musteites as auxiliaries of the
A.F. of L. leadership. With the A.F. of L. ac-
cepting wage-cuts all over the country on principle,
manifestly it could not afford to have these 23,000
unorganized textile workers win their strike against
the wage-cut. The A.F. of L. organizers went
into Lawrence to bring about the acceptance of the
cut, that is, to sell-out the strike. The Musteites
helped them. They viciously attacked the revolu-
tionary union and aided the reactionary A.F. of L.

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 199

leadership to secure prestige among the masses by
the Muste show of radicalism. In the 1931 Pater-
son strike of silk workers there was a complete
united front of capitalist politicians, A.F. of L.,
Socialist Party, Muste group, Lovestoneites, etc.,
against the National Textile Workers Union.

Every "left" maneuver of the A.F. of L. bu-
reaucrats to deceive the masses has the enthusiastic
support of the Muste group and their renegade
Communist allies. The putting over of the recent
general wage-cut of the railroad workers provided
a good example of Musteism in practice. From
the outset of the negotiations between the com-
panies and the union leaders it was evident that
the latter intended to accept the cut after making
a few maneuvers to create the impression among
the rank and file that they were fighting the com-
panies' proposition. Manifestly, the task of every
militant was to expose this plot and to organize
the workers against it. But no sooner did the
latter begin their sham battle against the cut than
Muste's paper, The Labor Age, Dec., 1931,
declared: "The fact that the twenty-one railroad
labor unions in this country have informed a com-
mittee of railroad presidents that they will not
accept a Voluntary' cut in wages of 10% is a
hopeful sign. It may mean a turning point in
American trade union history." This was plain
aid and comfort to the enemy, deceiving the work-

200 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

ers and making it easy for the leaders to betray
them.

The Bankruptcy of Social Fascism

Now LET us see whether or not capitalism is de-
veloping in Social Fascism a means with which it
can quench the class struggle and beat down the
surging proletarian revolution. Even a cursory
glance shows that with the narrowing of the eco-
nomic base of Social Fascism, caused by the in-
ability of capitalism to so widely corrupt the labor
aristocracy, goes a narrowing of its mass base
among the working class. Social Fascism is bank-
rupt in theory and practice and, despite (and be-
cause of) the support it gets from the employers
and the State, it is entering into a period of disin-
tegration.

By its daily role in the class struggle Social
Fascism shows itself to be the road, not to Socialism
but to the still deeper enslavement of the workers.
The Social Democratic theory that the capitalist
"democracy" would gradually evolve into a Social-
ist government leads in hard reality to Socialist
support of growing Fascist dictatorships all over
the capitalist world; its conception of a steadily
rising standard of living for the workers under an
organized capitalism leads, in the decaying capi-
talist system, to the acceptance of wholesale wage-
cuts, starvation of the unemployed, preparations
for war against the Soviet Union, etc.

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 201

Inevitably the meaning of all this is seeping
into the minds of the masses of workers who have
hitherto followed the lead of the Social Democrats.
Although they still have many stubborn illusions,
they are learning that the Social Democracy is
their enemy, and they are starting to turn against
it. Hence, there is beginning a world-wide decline
in the mass influence and organizational strength
of the Social Democracy and a growth of the Com-
munist movement. In Germany, where the capi-
talist crisis is farthest advanced and the process
of fasciszation of the Social Democracy most com-
plete, the above trends are best illustrated. Thus,
while the vote of the Social Democratic party
steadily falls off, that of the Communist party,
4,982,000 in the recent election, as rapidly increases.

Nor is the United States an exception to this
general tendency. Since the war the A.F. of L.
has lost about 2,000,000 members. The United
Mine Workers, once the backbone of the A.F. of
L., has been reduced to one-fourth of its former
membership and, because of its reactionary poli-<
cies, it has become a stench in the nostrils of the
miners. During the past two years the building
trades unions have lost at least one-third of their
members and other unions accordingly. Moreover,
throughout the A.F. of L., there is brewing an
explosive rank and file opposition to the reactionary
policies of the leaders. Never was the prestige of
the A.F. of L. so low among its members and the

202 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

broad masses of workers. As against all this, there
is the spreading mass influence of the Communist
party and the Trade Union Unity League.

The capitalists, naturally, do not passively ob-
serve the disintegration of Social Fascism, but try
to save it. Thus American employers are defi-
nitely cultivating the reactionary unions more and
more. This amounts, in substance, to a modifica-
tion of their historic open-shop policy. This
tendency manifests itself in many ways, such as
the "re-build the U.M.W. of A." movement; the
"granting" of the check-off to the anthracite
miners; the close collaboration of the bosses, the
government and the union leaders in the fake
needle trades strikes; the recognition accorded the
shop unions by the railroad companies in the recent
wage negotiations for many roads where they had
no members, the close cooperation of the A.F. of
L. and the Federal government, etc.

One of the most recent and striking mani-
festations of this tendency was the practically
unanimous passage of the Norris-La Guardia
Anti-Injunction bill. This bill, which presuma-
bly abolishes the "yellow dog" contract and limits
the power of federal courts to issue injunc-
tions, in reality does not do away with injunctions
at all, but lays the basis for their application
primarily against the revolutionary unions. It is
a definite move to facilitate the organization of
the A.F. of L. unions, and to give their reactionary

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 203

leaders a "paper victory" to support the paralyzing
non-partisan A.F. of L. political policy. It does
not originate in a sudden burst of liberalism on
the part of the government, but in a realization of
the necessity to develop the A.F. of L. leadership
still further as a strike-breaking organization.

The capitalist policy to strengthen Social
Fascism as a barrier against the Communist party
and the Trade Union Unity League is further ex-
pressed in the distinct cultivation of the Socialist
party that is now to be seen all over the country.
The S.P. has become a thoroughly respectable
party of "opposition." The capitalists realize that
the lack of a strong social reformist movement is
a great disadvantage for them, hence, they are con-
sciously building the Socialist party as a weapon
against the Communist party. Its candidates and
activities are given access to every avenue of pub-
licity. The endorsement of Norman Thomas by
most of the capitalist press in New York in the
recent elections shows the way the wind is blowing.
The capitalists know their own.

Such methods of galvanizing Social Fascism into
life must fail. The masses of workers can never be
dragooned into organizations that are so mani-
festly carrying out policies hostile to their interest.
But this is not to minimize the danger. The Social
Fascist method of obscuring the capitalist policy
under the guise of Socialism is an insidious menace.
It is now and will remain until the revolution the

204 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

most dangerous capitalist influence among the
working class, the most serious brake upon the
class struggle. The progress of the revolutionary
movement is to be measured by the breaking of the
Social Democracy's grip upon the workers, ideo-
logically and organizationally.

That there is such a breaking-down process now
going on is self-evident, and this disintegration will
increase with the sharpening of the general crisis of
capitalism. The Social Democratic illusions of the
masses are weakening, despite the frantic efforts of
the "left" phrase-mongers to keep them alive.
Less and less able are the employers to put into
effect their traditional policy of corrupting the
strategically situated labor aristocracy and thus to
play them off against the rest of the working class.
The differences between the skilled and unskilled
are diminishing, the working class is becoming uni-
fied. More and more skillful become the newly-
organized Communist parties in mobilizing the
rebellious masses. Consequently, the employers
are compelled to make ever greater use of open
force against the workers, to resort to a policy of
naked Fascism.

The Futility of Fascism

ABOVE, we have pointed out the tendency towards
the development of Fascism in all capitalist coun-
tries. Italy is the classical example of this tend-

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 205

ency carried to its logical conclusion. Defenders
of capitalism the world over have looked hopefully
towards Italy for a solution of the capitalist crisis.
Mussolini, as well as Ford, seemed to have the an-
swer for capitalism's woes. But we shall see that
this is not so.

Fascism is not an alternative to capitalism; it
is capitalism, the most extreme expression of the
capitalistic dictatorship. As Manuilsky says:
"The Fascist regime is not a new type of State;
it is one of the forms of the bourgeois dictatorship
in the epoch of imperialism." " Fascism does not
amend capitalist economics. The economic policy
of Fascism is the familiar capitalist program of the
exploitation of the workers and poor farmers.
The difference between Fascism and a bourgeois
democratic regime is that the former is more ex-
treme and brutal in its exploitation of the toilers.
As Manuilsky says further: "The main factor in
Fascism is its open offensive against the working
class with the employment of every form of vio-
lence and coercion." Thus, inevitably, Fascism
deepens the contradictions of capitalist society. It
must result in intensifying the economic crisis and
in stimulating the revolutionization of the toilers.

The wide development of Fascism in various
forms in the several capitalist countries is not a
sign of capitalism growing stronger, but weaker.
Fascism arises with the deepening of the capitalist

11 The Communist Parties and the Crisis of Capitalism, p. 36.

206 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

crisis. It is the desperate means by which capi-
talism in its extremity of crisis vainly tries to save
itself. It is significant that Fascism is most de-
veloped in exactly those countries that are the
weakest links in the capitalist world chain. In
some instances, to crush the workers, it incorpo-
rates the Social Fascist parties and unions into its
machinery; in others, it destroys not only the So-
cial Fascist organizations but also Liberal group-
ings.

Fascism is the instrument of finance capital. It
speeds the development of State capitalism, linking
the employers' organizations, "trade unions," etc.
directly to the government. Here, indeed, is a
heaven for capitalist "planners." Hence, all over
the world, the advocates of an "organized capi-
talism" have looked hopefully towards Italy. We
even find people who falsely dub themselves Com-
munists asserting that Fascism can liquidate the
economic crisis and do away with the class struggle.
Thus V. F. Calverton says in The Modern Quar-
terly, (Jan.-Mar., 1931): "In either case (Com-
munism or Fascism, WZF) industry can be
organized into a scientific unit, the present dissipa-
tion of energy be saved, and the friction of
democratic struggle be destroyed."

But capitalism's hope in Fascist Italy has been
no less futile than its enthusiasm for the "new
capitalism" in the United States. Italy is just
as deep in the mud of the capitalist crisis as other

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 207

countries are in its mire. During the past year
Italian industrial production has rapidly declined,
examples of this decrease being steel 16%, cotton
30%, automobiles 50%, etc., the general average
of decline being about 40%. Exports, notwith-
standing government forced-draft methods of
dumping, have dropped seriously. The crisis also
manifests itself heavily in the realm of finance;
the stocks of the largest and most important in-
dustrial undertakings having fallen off 50% to
75% since 1929; in November the Banca Com-
merciale Italiana, the largest bank in Italy, was
saved from bankruptcy only by drastic govern-
ment aid; in 1931 the government faced a deficit of
896,000,000 lire as against a surplus of 150,000,000
lire in 1930.

The living standards of the Italian workers and
peasants have also catastrophically declined. An
Associated Press dispatch of Mar. 15, 1932, says:
"Italy's unemployed at the end of February to-
talled 1,147,000, a new high and an increase of
96,000 in a month." Only one-fourth receive the
beggarly unemployment benefits. Wages have
been slashed as much as 40% in the past four years.
The prices paid to the peasants for their products
have been similarly cut. So greatly have the
masses been impoverished that Mussolini could
cynically remark: "It is fortunate for Italy that
the Italian workers and peasants are not in the
habit of eating more than once a day."

208 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

The inevitable result of such conditions is a rising
revolutionary movement in Italy also, despite the
ferocious terror. The Chicago Tribune, (Feb. 20,
1932), says: "A wave of unrest is sweeping Italy
from North to South and in many places disturb-
ances have taken on the character of mass risings
of the countryside against the authorities . . . the
ordinary police forces are helpless and only the ar-
rival of reserves prevented the rioters from lynch-
ing the authorities."

Fascism, the weapon of big capitalists, bankers
and land-owners, finds its chief mass base among
the petty bourgeoisie until these eventually be-
come revolutionized by the intolerable conditions.
The mass of the workers cannot be won over to
Fascism. They see in Fascism a murde*-ous enemy
of the working class. The most that the Musso-
linis and Hitlers can do is to temporarily win the
support of sections of office employees and
agricultural workers and others of the more back-
ward and politically inexperienced toilers. As
the workers free themselves from Social Demo-
cratic illusions they go to Communism, not to
Fascism.

In his new book, As I See It, Norman Thomas
develops the theory that the revolt of the workers
cannot succeed in the face of the highly-destructive
arms possessed by the capitalists, that the airplane
can defeat the barricade. But this is only a call
to the workers to surrender. The ruling class,

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 209

also under Fascism, must have a mass base. It can
not maintain power without one, notwithstanding
all its airplanes and artillery. Fascism, as we have
seen, has such a base in the petty bourgeoisie, and
Fascism will disintegrate as this base collapses. In
Italy, Poland and other Fascist countries this dis-
integration is clearly proceeding with the develop-
ment of the capitalist crisis. The revolution
attacks Fascism not only from without but from
within.

The proletarian revolution cannot be crushed
by force, even with the assistance of the most tricky
Social Fascist and Fascist demagogy. Chang Kai
Shek slaughtered 200,000 militant workers and
peasants in the greatest reign of terror of modern
history, but the wave of revolution in China mounts
higher and higher. Poland, in spite of its extreme
Fascist terrorism, goes rapidly to the revolutionary
crisis. De Rivera in Spain learned something
about trying to rule by violence, and the Russian
Czar likewise. Hitler, if he comes to power in
Germany, will eventually learn the same bitter les-
son. And in Italy there is a revolutionary storm
brewing that will blow Fascism to bits.

Mussolini was able to seize the power in Italy
because of the Socialist betrayal of the great metal
strike of 1920, which demoralized the workers who
had hoped to make the revolution. Fascism is not
an inevitable stage of the capitalist dictatorship;
the revolution may forestall it. But it is possible

210 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

that Fascism will secure the power in Germany,
England, Japan, the United States and other coun-
tries through similar Socialist betrayals. In any
event, however, Fascism will not be able to solve
the capitalist crisis, and to save the present decay-
ing social system. It cannot liquidate the class
struggle; it cannot permanently hold down the
workers and poor farmers by force. Faced by
constantly worsening conditions and mass starva-
tion, these masses will, under the leadership of the
Communist party, eventually break through every
system of Fascist terrorism and establish a Soviet
regime.

CHAPTER IV

THE REVOLUTIONARY WAT OUT
OF THE CRISIS

IN THE preceding chapters we have seen that world
capitalism, of which American capitalism is an in-
tegral part, sinks deeper and deeper into general
crisis, with consequent widespread impoverishment
of the masses, development of the menacing danger
of imperialist war, and growth of a world- wide
revolutionary upsurge by the exploited masses of
toilers. We have seen, further, that every effort
of the world bourgeoisie to halt or reverse these
conditions only results, in the long run, in their
intensification. Special measures to ease the pres-
ent economic cyclical crisis — inflation, interna-
tional moratoriums, State budget reductions, etc.
— cannot permanently cure the basic general crisis
of capitalism. This general crisis, with each re-
curring cyclical crisis, deepens and spreads.

In revolutionary contrast, we have seen the strik-
ing success of Socialism in the Soviet Union.
There the workers and farmers have overthrown
capitalism and established the dictatorship of the

proletariat; they have found the solution to the

211

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

economic, political and social contradictions which
are undermining the capitalist world. As the
capitalist system internationally sinks deeper and
deeper into crisis, the Socialist system in the
U.S.S.R. achieves an even faster rate of progress
to higher stages of well-being and culture for the
masses.

The implications of all this are clear: to escape
the encroaching capitalist starvation and to emanci-
pate themselves, the workers of the world, includ-
ing those in this country, must and will take the
revolutionary way out of the crisis. That is, they
will carry out a militant policy now in defense of
their daily interests and, finally, following the ex-
ample of the Russian workers, they will abolish
capitalism and establish Socialism.

The Conquest of Political Power

BY THE term "abolition" of capitalism we mean
its overthrow in open struggle by the toiling
masses, led by the proletariat. Although the world
capitalist system constantly plunges deeper into
crisis we cannot therefore conclude that it will col-
lapse of its own weight. On the contrary, as
Lenin has stated, no matter how difficult the capi-
talist crisis becomes, "there is no complete absence
of a way out" for the bourgeoisie until it faces the
revolutionary proletariat in arms.

For the capitalists the way out of the crisis is

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS

by forcing great masses of unemployed into semi-
starvation, driving down the wage levels of the
employed, waging desperate imperialist war, and
instituting a regime of Fascist terrorism. This is
the way the whole capitalist world development
goes. For the workers, the capitalist way out
means deeper enslavement and poverty than ever.

The capitalists will never voluntarily give up
control of society and abdicate their system of ex-
ploiting the masses. Regardless of the devastating
effects of their decaying capitalism; let there be
famine, war, pestilence, terrorism, they will hang
on to their wealth and power until it is snatched
from their hands by the revolutionary proletariat.

The capitalists will not give up of their own
accord ; nor can they be talked, bought or voted out
of power. To believe otherwise would be a deadly
fatalism, disarming and paralyzing the workers in
their struggle. No ruling class ever surrendered
to a rising subject class without a last ditch open
fight. To put an end to the capitalist system will
require a consciously revolutionary act by the great
toiling masses, led by the Communist party; that is,
the conquest of the State power, the destruction
of the State machine created by the ruling class,
and the organization of the proletarian dictator-
ship. The lessons of history allow of no other con-
clusion.

It is the historical task of the proletariat to put
a last end to war. Nevertheless, the working class

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

cannot itself come into power without civil war.
This is not due to the choice of the toilers ; it is be-
cause the ruling class will never permit itself to be
ousted without such a fight. "Force," says Marx,
"is the midwife of every old society when it is preg-
nant with the new one ; force is the instrument and
the means by which social movements hack their
way through and break up the fossilized political
forms." The Program of the Communist Inter-
national thus puts the matter :

"The conquest of power by the proletariat does not
mean peacefully 'capturing' the ready-made bourgeois
State machinery by means of a parliamentary majority.
The bourgeoisie resort to every means of violence and
terror to safeguard and strengthen its predatory prop-
erty and its political domination. Like the feudal no-
bility of the past, the bourgeoisie cannot abandon its
historical position to the new class without a desperate
and frantic struggle."

The Social Fascists make a great parade of
their theory of the "gradual" evolution of capi-
talism into Socialism through a process of peaceful
parliamentarism. Thus Mr. Hilquit, the million-
aire leader of the Socialist party says : "In the more
democratic countries, especially those in which the
Socialist and labor movements constitute important
political and social factors, the necessary transi-
tional reforms, or at least a large part of them, may
be gradually conquered through the direct control
by the proletariat of important organs of the State,

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS

such as municipalities or legislatures, or through
the indirect influence of the growing labor move-
ment." 1 Mr. Hillquit, like Social Fascists gen-
erally, goes on to say that the present imperialist
government is actually the "Socialist transitional
State, although it would be impossible for us to
say just when we entered it."

We have seen in the previous chapter just what
this "gradualness" theory of the Social Fascists
means in practice — simply the creation of a united
front with the capitalists to throw the burden of
the crisis upon the workers, to try desperately to
save the capitalist system and to crush back the
revolution. Nor does the future hold any better
perspective for this theory so far as the workers
are concerned. Nowhere in the experience of the
world class struggle can any justification be found
for the conception that the capitalists have per-
mitted or ever will permit themselves to be shifted
from their ruling position without an open strug-
gle. On the contrary, the evidence is entirely in
the other direction. The capitalist class always
brutally uses its armed forces against rebellious
workers, meanwhile throwing its democracy and
parliamentarism into the waste-basket.

What the capitalist class does when it is in a
revolutionary situation is conclusively shown by
the experience in Italy. In 1920 the Italian capi-
talists found themselves confronting a revolution-

i Socialism in Theory and Practice, p. 103.

216 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

ary crisis. Hence, they made no delay in
scrapping their whole parliamentary system, adopt-
ing a program of Fascist violence and proceeding
with fire and sword against the working class, pre-
viously betrayed and demoralized by the Socialist
party. Workers and peasants were murdered and
a reign of terror instituted on every front. Par-
liamentary representatives were expelled or assas-
sinated, unions and cooperatives broken up, etc.
Who but a political illiterate or a plain betrayer
of the working class can assert that these Italian
Fascist capitalist bandits can ever be voted out of
power ?

The situation in Germany teaches the same les-
sons. The German bourgeoisie, fearing the revo-
lution, are developing Fascism to drown it in blood.
The Reichstag is only a democratic sham to hide
the almost naked Fascist dictatorship. In Eng-
land, although the crisis is not so far developed,
Fascist trends are beginning to be seen. The Eng-
lish bourgeoisie, like the German, French, and
others, will not surrender without the bitterest war
against the proletariat. Or perhaps India and
China present valid examples of how the toiling
masses can achieve their emancipation without
struggle? Chang Kai Shek would be especially
responsive, mayhap, to parliamentary action by
the workers and peasants ?

But the history of the American capitalist class
offers ample evidence that the toilers can defeat the

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 217

ruling class only in an open struggle. The Ameri-
can bourgeois revolution of 1776, even as the Rus-
sian Bolshevik revolution of 1917, was carried
through on the basis of armed struggle. This fact
the patriotic ladies of the D.A.R., fearful of the
"bad" example set to the rising proletariat, would
like to forget. "American history gives us another
example of the same principle when, by the elec-
tion of Lincoln, the overwhelming majority voted
out of power in the United States government the
southern slave holders, these slave holders took up
arms to maintain their particular system of exploi-
tation against the will of the majority." 2

Nor has the American capitalist class ever hesi-
tated to use violence against the toilers whenever
its smallest interests were involved. Have we not
seen that time and again when workers have struck
against actual starvation conditions they have had
to face troops, as well as armies of police, gunmen,
etc. ? Ludlow, Paint and Cabin creeks in West
Virginia, Gastonia, Kentucky, and innumerable
other examples of the use of armed force tell their
own story. If the capitalists of this country pass
so quickly to the use of violence against the work-
ers when the latter are fighting for the simplest
economic demands, what will they do when they
face a revolutionary situation in which their whole
system is at stake ? To ask the question is to an-
swer it.

2 Statement of Communist Party to the Fish Committee.

218 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

In view of the universal lessons to the contrary,
it is a crime to teach the workers that they can de-
feat such a ruthless capitalist class without open
struggle. The Social Fascist theory that the eco-
nomic and political contradictions of capitalism,
will of themselves, by a gradual democratization of
the State, bring about the automatic, peaceful, and
painless transformation of capitalism into Social-
ism paralyzes the struggle of the workers and
facilitates the rule of the bourgeoisie. The social
Fascists, with the help of the Trotzkyist, Max
Eastman,3 vainly try to distort Marx in support
of their theory.

This Social Fascist theory of "gradualness" is
the most insidious that the workers have to deal
with. But there are many others, if less important,
that tend in a similar direction. Among these are
the "folded-arm" general strike conception of the
Syndicalists; the sectarian scholasticism of the So-
cialist Labor party and the Proletarian party; the
petty bourgeois Anarchist theories of individual
violence ; 4 Gandhi's non-cooperation, non-violence
program; the capitalistic Utopias of Carver, Gil-
lette and others for the workers directly to buy out
the capitalist industries (expressed in their books
respectively, The Present Economic Revolution in
the United States and The People's Corporation);
the fatalism of Veblen who, in The Price System

3 Marx and Lenin.

* See Living My Life, by Emma Goldman, to learn how remote
petty bourgeois Anarchism is from the proletarian revolution.

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 219

and the Engineers, maintains that capitalism will
eventually, through the working of its inner contra-
dictions, get into such a chronic and devastating
crisis that in desperation society will spontaneously
call upon the engineers to take over the operation
of the industries and the government.

The question of the revolution is not merely one
of a ripe objective situation. Such is, of course, a
first requisite for the revolution. But the subjec-
tive factor is no less decisive. Capitalism will not
grow into Socialism. The great masses of toilers
must be in a revolutionary mood; they must have
the necessary organization and revolutionary pro-
gram ; they must smash capitalism. This all means
that they must be under the general leadership of
the only revolutionary party, the Communist party.
The real measure of a revolutionary situation in
any given country is the strength of the Com-
munist party.

Capitalism established itself as a world system
by force. It defeated feudalism and laid the basis
of its own power in a whole series of revolutionary
civil wars in England, the United States, France,
etc. Moreover, it has lived 'by violence, its regime
being marked by the most terrible exploitation and
devastating wars in human history. And capi-
talism will die sword in hand, fighting in vain to
beat back the oncoming revolutionary proletariat.

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

The Revolutionary Forces in the United
States

Now LET us see if there are enough latent revolu-
tionary forces in the United States to carry
through the revolution, and what progress has been
made in organizing them. In Chapter I we have
seen how deep is the impoverishment of the toiling
masses of workers and farmers and how tre-
mendously this is being intensified by the economic
crisis. We must, therefore, examine how extensive
these impoverished classes are; see, in fact, who
owns America, and who has a stake in the revo-
lution.

The Labor Fact Book, basing its conclusions
upon the report of the Federal Trade Commis-
sion, says, "The richest 1% of the population in
the United States owns at least 59 % of the wealth ;
the petty capitalists, (12%), own at least 31 % of
the wealth; and the great mass of industrial work-
ers, working farmers, and small shop keepers, or
87% of the population, own barely 10%." These
figures, constantly developing more favorably for
the rich and spelling deepening exploitation, pov-
erty and misery for the poor, show graphically
enough who has a real stake in the country and
who has not.

The choicest "flowers" of American capitalism
are such multi-billionaires as the House of Mor-
gan, which controls corporations worth $74,000,-

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS

000,000, including innumerable railroads, banks,
insurance companies, auto plants, steel mills, etc.;
the Rockefellers with their billions in oil, chemi-
cals, railroads, banks, etc.; the Mellon family,
whose wealth control is estimated by W. P. Beazell,
in the current World's Work, at eight billion dol-
lars; the great Ford fortune, etc. "In 1929, 504
millionaires had incomes of $1,185,100,000, or more
than the selling price of all American wheat and
cotton in 1930." 6

It is among the great masses of the 87% who
own only 10% of the national wealth that the revo-
lution will find a sufficiency of forces to overthrow
capitalism. Capitalism in this country will learn
to its undoing that the producing masses will not
tolerate a condition where they are forced to work
and starve while the great wealth they produce
flows automatically, by the operation of the capi-
talist system, to still further swell the fortunes of
a handful of wealthy social parasites. "Wars and
panics on the stock exchange; machine gunfire and
arson; starvation, lice, cholera and typhus; good
growing weather for the House of Morgan," says
John Dos Passos, in his book, 1919, and the same
can be said for capitalists generally. The statistics
of the distribution of wealth in the United States
and the general worsening of the toilers' standards
are figures and conditions that speak in terms of
eventual revolution.

5 America Faces the Future, p. 356.

222 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

In analyzing the potentially revolutionary forces
the first group to be considered are the workers.
They are the very heart of the revolutionary move-
ment and lead it in all its stages. Including the
agricultural wage workers, the total number of
wage and salaried workers in the United States
is about 35,000,000, out of a total of approximately
43,000,000 "gainfully employed." With their
families they constitute at least 70% of the total
population of this country. Overwhelmingly they
are low-paid unskilled and semi-skilled workers
who are manifestly being radicalized rapidly under
pressure of worsening conditions. The so-called
skilled workers, although somewhat better off than
the rest, are losing their privileged position. Un-
employment, wage-cuts, etc., are also radicalizing
these skilled workers, whose position in industry
has steadily become less strategic through speciali-
zation, mechanization, etc. Their aristocratic iso-
lation from the rest of the workers is being broken
down; the crisis is unifying the working class.
The most conservative sections of the working
class are the office workers, who comprise about
10% of the whole. But here again, rapidly wors-
ening conditions are having their inevitable results.
Although in the first phases of the crisis these
white collar elements offer a recruiting ground for
Fascism, eventually, as events in Germany show,
their trend is, in the main, in the direction that the
working class travels.

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS

Next to the workers in revolutionary importance
are the poor farmers. Although not wage work-
ers themselves, the poor farmers play a decisive
revolutionary role in all countries as the allies of
the proletariat. Especially important are they in
the United States where agriculture occupies such
a large position in the national economy. The es-
timated farm population on Jan. 1, 1931, was
27,430,000, a decline of 4,500,000 since 1910. The
great masses are poor and getting poorer. The
income of the whole group, including the richer
farmers, amounts only to about 10% of the total
national income of all classes in the United States,
although the farmers comprise about 22% of the
entire population. Capitalism has nothing to offer
the poor farmer except more and more pauperi-
zation. An official of the Federal Reserve Bank,
quoted in Current History, Mar., 1932, brutally
states this as follows: "Our farmers should stop
buying radios and Ford cars and live like peas-
ants." Talk about collectivization of the farms
under capitalism is Utopian; this can take place
only under a Soviet system. The way to the big
farm under capitalism is by the starvation and ex-
propriation of the small farmers, which goes ahead
ever faster. Mr. Pitkin is wrong when he declares
in The Forum, Aug., 1931, that "The American
farmer must go the way of the coolie or the cor-
poration." He will go neither way, but to So-
cialism. The American small farmer will play a

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

vital role in the developing Communist movement
in the United States.

The Negroes also constitute a great potentially
revolutionary force. Comprising about 12,000,000,
they are the poorest of the poor. They are made
up of the most impoverished farmers, the lowest
paid workers in the industries and in domestic
service. They are the most bitterly exploited and
persecuted element of the whole population.
There is no section which has to confront such ter-
rible economic, political, and social conditions. At
his every turn the Negro faces a system of the
rankest discrimination and exploitation. His out-
rageous position in society is a blazing indictment
and exposure of the sham American capitalist
democracy.

In industry the Negro is forced to take the hard-
est, dirtiest work for the lowest wages; he is de-
nied access to the skilled trades; he is the last to
be hired and the first to be fired during industrial
crises ; when unemployment relief is distributed he
is shamelessly discriminated against. As an agri-
cultural worker and share-crop farmer in the
South, he is subjected to an almost chattel slavery
exploitation and terrorism from landlords, bank-
ers, etc. In his political life he is disfranchised;
he is denied the right to hold office and to vote; he
is refused the right of trial by jury; he is savagely
lynched by mobs of whites, led by business men and
landlords, and the State condones these shocking

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS

murders; in court his word counts for nothing
against a white man's; when convicted, he receives
sentences two or three times as severe as white men
get for similar offenses. Socially the Negro is
ostracized. Not only in the South but also in the
North. He is systematically Jim-Crowed in ho-
tels, restaurants, theatres, etc.; he is denied the
right to an education; he is made to live in the
most unsanitary sections of towns; his women- folk
are the object of unpunished insult and assault
from the whites.

The capitalists try to keep the Negroes isolated
by cultivating race prejudice among the white
workers; but this cannot permanently succeed.
The white workers will learn that only in the most
complete solidarity with the Negro masses can
they make headway in defending their interests.
The Negro masses will make the very best fighters
for the revolution. The manner in which they are
turning to the Communist party for organization
and leadership constitutes one of the most impor-
tant political facts in American life. The Negro
petty bourgeois leaders are non-plussed by it. In
a symposium of 17 non-Communist Negro editors
in The Crisis, (April, 1932), a Social Fascist jour-
nal, on the issue of Communism among the Ne-
groes, W. M. Kelly declares: "the wonder is not
that the Negro is beginning, at least, to think along
Communistic lines, but that he did not embrace that
doctrine en masse long ago."

226 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

The revolution will not fail to recruit many sup-
porters also from the ranks of the lesser city petty
bourgeoisie. The advance of capitalism inevitably
crushes down into the proletariat great masses of
the small tradesmen, petty manufacturers, profes-
sionals, intellectuals, etc., that make up this big
class. The steady progress of trustified capital in
industry has long since broken the backbone of
the petty bourgeoisie in this field, and now the
chain store is ruthlessly invading its greatest
stronghold, retail trade. According to Ray B.
Westerfield in Current History, (Dec., 1931),
there were in 1930 in the United States 7837 chains
of stores with 198,145 units, and the movement is
growing like wildfire. This wholesale ruin of the
petty bourgeoisie, brought about by the normal
development of capitalism, is hastened by the in-
dustrial crisis, during which the process of the con-
centration of capital proceeds faster than ever.
Large masses of the petty bourgeoisie are being
impoverished. These elements are the natural re-
cruiting ground for Fascism, but the Communist
party does not surrender them to the Fascists.
Experience, especially in Germany, where the ex-
propriation, proletarianization and even pauperi-
zation of the petty bourgeoisie has developed to
unprecedented degree, shows that great numbers
of these people logically become convinced that
capitalism holds no hope for them and that only in
Communism is there a prospect for life and happi-

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS

ness. The recent significant mass protest against
the proposed Federal sales tax was principally a
movement of the discontented petty bourgeoisie.

Especially is there a trend among the petty bour-
geois intellectuals towards Communism. This is
shown by the many prominent writers in Europe
and the United States who in the past few years
have declared for Communism. In the past pe-
riod American imperialism provided a good living
for the intellectuals and professionals generally.
Those already carrying on their active work had
easy pickings; those who were graduating from
the innumerable colleges and universities found
soft berths awaiting them. So the American in-
telligentsia, almost unanimously, united in a hymn
of hundred percentism. But the capitalist crisis
has changed all this. Many intellectuals and pro-
fessionals now find their means of making a live-
lihood either wiped out or drastically curtailed,
with consequent heavy drops in their standards of
living. "A short time ago," says The Nation,
(Mar. 3, 1932), "it was revealed that 45 members
of the Detroit Bar Association were on-the-wel-
fare — recipients of municipal charity." It is
such conditions of keen competition, inferior re-
muneration and actual unemployment that the
budding intellectuals still in the schools and col-
leges have to face. It is not surprising, therefore,
that currents of radicalism begin to develop among
intellectuals generally. Of this the recent student

228 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

strike at Columbia University was an example.
Even the intellectuals are being compelled to think.
At first, in this discontent there may be strong
Fascist or semi-Fascist currents, but eventually
much of it will develop in the direction of the revo-
lution and Communism.

In measuring the potential forces for and
against the revolution, naturally the question of
the role to be played by the army and navy is one
of fundamental importance; for, in the final show-
down, it is upon them that the bourgeoisie relies
to maintain its control. If it loses the armed
forces, then all is lost. Here, certainly, the revo-
lution will recruit powerful forces, with fatal ef-
fects to capitalism. The armed forces are not
impervious to Communism simply because they
have patriotic propaganda dinned into their ears
and are subjected to a rigid discipline. The great
bulk of these forces originate in proletarian or
farmer families and they eventually respond to the
sufferings and miseries of their close relatives.
Especially is all this true of conscript armies. Be-
sides, they have their own deep grievances in the
service. Experience teaches that such worker-
peasant forces are very unreliable for the bour-
geoisie. This was exemplified by the armies of
the Czar and the Kaiser in the Russian and Ger-
man revolutionary situations. It was only a few
months ago that the capitalists of the world got a

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 229

shiver of fright and a foretaste of the future by
the revolts in the British and Chilean navies.

Within these great blocs of the population —
the workers, farmers, Negroes, lesser city petty
bourgeoisie — there are sufficient potential revolu-
tionary forces to put an end to capitalism. They
constitute the overwhelming majority of the
people. And the deepening capitalist crisis will
revolutionize them. The objective that the Com-
munist party aims at in the mobilization of these
forces is the winning of the majority of the work-
ing class. With a majority of the workers, which
in a revolutionary situation would necessarily carry
along with it large numbers of the other revolu-
tionary elements, the Party would be within strik-
ing distance of the revolution.

But, of course, the American Communist party
is only making a beginning in the accomplishment
of this great task. Formed in 1919 by a split-off
of the left wing of the Socialist party, it is now
laying its foundations among the workers. Al-
though the Party is still lagging very much behind
the objective possibilities and has by no means
mobilized the masses who are ripe for its leader-
ship, it is, nevertheless, substantially increasing its
membership and influence in all the key industries
and localities. The actual strength of the Com-
munist movement in the United States is not some-
thing that can be accurately stated in just so many
figures. It has to be measured largely by the gen-

230 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

eral mass influence of the Party and its program.

The membership of the Communist party is
approximately 15,000. To this should be added
5,000 members in the Young Communist League.
These figures represent the number of dues-payers,
the body of Communists who are thoroughly con-
scious of the necessity of maintaining a permanent,
disciplined Party. But the influence of the Party
stretches far and wide beyond the limits of its
actual membership. Thus the nine daily papers
of the Party have a combined circulation of about
200,000. Besides this there are 20 weekly, semi-
monthly, and monthly papers with about 100,000
circulation. This is the Party press proper. In
addition, there are a large number of weekly and
monthly papers in the revolutionary unions, de-
fense, relief, fraternal and other organizations,
with at least another 100,000 circulation.

In the 1928 elections, with the Party on the bal-
lot in 34 states, it polled 48,770 votes. In the
"off-year," 1930, in 18 states it polled 82,651.
The Fish committee, in its report, with great
alarm pointed out that there was an increase of
229% in 16 states. In the 1931 elections consid-
erable increases were scored in many localities, two
Communist councilmen being elected in Ohio and
four in Minnesota. Doubtless, the 1932 national
elections will register a large increase in the Party
vote. But elections, for a number of reasons, are

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS

not an exact register of the Party strength. For
one thing, large numbers of the poorer-paid work-
ers, to whom naturally the Party makes the
strongest appeal, are disfranchised because of
shifts of residence, through unemployment, through
tax delinquencies and foreign birth. Also, in a
great many cases Communist votes are scornfully
ignored by the usual ultra-reactionary election
machines and are not counted. Moreover, in the
ranks of revolutionary workers there are many who
underestimate the great importance of voting in
the elections.

The real power of the Party is seen in the mass
movements which it initiates itself, or which, ini-
tiated by other revolutionary organizations, it gives
its full support. The biggest of these are the
movements of the unemployed. In the March
6th, 1930, national demonstration for unemploy-
ment insurance no less than 1,250,000 workers
participated throughout the country. This huge
outpouring was followed in the ensuing months by
many large local demonstrations, state hunger
marches, etc. A demand upon the federal gov-
ernment in 1930 for the adoption of the Workers'
Unemployment Insurance Bill contained approxi-
mately 1,000,000 individual and collective en-
dorsements. The big National Hunger March of
December, 1931, put in motion during the many
hundreds of local demonstrations held in connec-
tion therewith, at least 1,000,000 workers. The

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

unemployed councils, organized under the National
Committee of the Unemployed Councils and made
up of workers of all political opinions, number at
least 75,000 members.

The Communist party also exerts a wide and
growing influence in the trade union field. Its
main support is given to the building of the
revolutionary unions of the Trade Union Unity
League. It also lays great stress upon the forma-
tion of revolutionary minorities and movements in-
side the A.F. of L. unions. During the past
several years the revolutionary unions and minori-
ties have conducted a number of large mass strug-
gles. Among these were the New York cloak
(35,000) and fur (12,000) strikes in 1926-7, and
the Passaic textile strike (15,000) during the
same period. In the United Mine Workers of
America, in 1926, the left wing candidate polled
101,000 votes, or an actual majority, but was
robbed of the election by the corrupt Lewis ma-
chine. In the big U.M.W.A. strike of 1927-8 at
least 100,000 miners followed the lead of the left
wing. The important strike of the Gastonia tex-
tile workers in 1929 was conducted by the revolu-
tionary National Textile Workers Union. In
Lawrence, in Feb., 1931, the N.T.W.U. led a short
strike of 10,000. It has since led a dozen smaller
strikes in many New England textile towns and
played a big role in the strikes later in the year
in Paterson and Lawrence. During the Spring

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 233

and Summer of 1931 the National Miners Union
of the TUUL conducted a strike of 40,000 miners
for three months in Western Pennsylvania, East-
ern Ohio and Northern West Virginia. At pres-
ent it is leading the heroic strike of the Kentucky
miners. The foregoing are some of the larger
struggles of the revolutionary union forces. The
total membership of the unions of the TUUL is
approximately 40,000, the minorities in the trade
unions, less definitely organized, are double or
triple that number. In the case of the TUUL
unions and minorities, as with all the revolutionary
organizations, their influence over the masses ex-
tends far beyond the borders of their actual mem-
bership.

Among the Negro masses the Communist party
is developing a wide following. In the unem-
ployment campaigns, especially in Chicago and
Cleveland, many thousands of Negroes militantly
participated. In the 1931, N.M.U. mine strike
more than 6,000 of the strikers were Negroes.
The Party leads the fight to defend the nine
Scottsboro boys, whom the Southern capitalists are
trying to legally lynch. It is estimated that no
less than 1,000,000, a large percentage of whom
were Negroes, took part in the innumerable mass
meetings in which this case played a central role.
The Negro membership of the Party and the
Party's influence among the Negro masses are rap-
idly on the increase.

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

The Communist party also conducts movements
and supports revolutionary organizations in many
other mass activities and struggles. It is a strong
and leading factor in the fight for the release of
political prisoners, including Mooney and Billings,
the Kentucky miners, the Centralia and Imperial
Valley prisoners, etc. It has organized great dem-
onstrations against imperialist war. Among the
farmers, the Party carries on considerable work
and is gradually laying the basis for a mass or-
ganization.

The foregoing facts and figures give at least a
general idea of the strength of the Communist
party at the present stage of the development of
the class struggle in the United States. While
they indicate that the Party has only made a start
at the mobilization of the potentially revolutionary
forces in the United States, they, at the same time,
sum up into a picture of a Party gradually en-
trenching itself among the masses, especially the
most exploited sections, and slowly building youth-
ful bone and muscle in preparation for the gigan-
tic revolutionary work that lies ahead.

The Communist Party; the Party of the Toilers

THE COMMUNIST PARTY is the only Party that rep-
resents the interests of these toiling masses of
workers, farmers, Negroes, lower city petty bour-
geoisie. It alone fights for their welfare now and

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS

provides the means for their ultimate prosperity
and freedom. The other parties and groups —
Republican, Democratic, Progressive and Social-
ist — are the enemies of these classes and the tools
of the big capitalists.

The Republican party is the party of finance
capital, of the great bankers and industrialists of
Wall Street, of which the Morgan interests stand
at the head. The Hoover government is the in-
strument of these owners and rulers of America.
It uses all its power to oppress the producing
masses for the benefit of the capitalist exploiters.
The present situation, with its economic collapse
and hunger and misery for the broad masses, is
the logical result of this capitalist policy. From
the Republican party no relief, but only a worsen-
ing of existing conditions may be expected.

The Democratic party is no less the party of the
big capitalists. Raskob, the dictator of the Demo-
cratic party, is notoriously the representative of
the Morgan - General Motors - Dupont interests.
The corrupt and reactionary Tammany Hall of
New York City is indistinguishable politically
from the rotten Republican Vare machine in
Philadelphia. The Democratic party is directly re-
sponsible for the unspeakable regime of lynching,
Jim-Crowism and discrimination against the Ne-
gro masses in the South, although in this it has the
full support of the Republican Federal Adminis-
tration. Wherever the Democratic party is found

236 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

in power its practical policies are identical with
those of the Republicans and they sum up into a
defense of the interests of the capitalists at the
expense of the producing masses.

In recent years the Democratic party has ever
more clearly exposed its big capitalist character.
It long ago abandoned its demagogic attacks on
the gold standard, imperialism and the trusts.
And then, when the Morgan representative Ras-
kob took over the party leadership a few years
ago, this was immediately followed by the giving
up completely of the old Democratic policy of low
tariffs and the adoption of a high tariff policy on
the Republican model. The thoroughgoing po-
litical unity of the two capitalist parties was fur-
ther emphasized by growing tendencies to link
them up organizationally without, however, aban-
doning the two-party principle which is so valuable
to the capitalists. This developing organizational
unity reached its highest point in the open alliance
between the heads of both parties in the present
Congress to put across the Hoover-Wall Street
program of subsidizing the great banks, starving
the unemployed, cutting the wages of the em-
ployed, shifting the tax burden upon the masses,
preparing for imperialist war, etc. All went
swimmingly for this two-party machine until it
slipped a cog in trying to put across the sales tax.

In 1932 elections, the Democratic party is sched-
uled to play its historical role as the second party

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 237

of capitalism. Although its basic policies are
identical with the Republican party, it will make
a great show of opposition. Large masses of the
working class, farmers, Negroes and petty bour-
geoisie are deeply discontented at their impossible
conditions under the Hoover government. There-
fore, it is the task of the Democratic party, with
a flood of demagogy, to delude these masses, and
to prevent their taking serious steps against the
capitalists, by keeping them fettered with the two
capitalist party system. This is the menace of the
Roosevelts, Garners, Hurrays, Bakers, etc. They
are among the most effective instruments of the
capitalists to enforce upon the producing masses a
continuation of the present hunger regime.

The Progressive bloc also does not represent the
interests of the producing masses. It represents
the rich farmers and certain sections of small capi-
talists, and it supports the basic policies of Wall
Street. During the present Congress the so-
called Progressives supported the elementary pro-
posals of the Hoover government to throw the
burden of the crisis upon the producers. Their
"fight" against the sales tax developed only when,
in a broad movement of indignation, many mil-
lions of the small farmers, city petty bourgeoisie
and workers demanded its rejection. Then, under
the lash of Wall Street, they fled precipitately and
proceeded, with later taxation, to undo the defeat
of the sales tax. The only fight the Progressives

238 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

ever make is for a few crumbs from the rich man's
table.

The Progressive leaders, like their reactionary
cronies at the head of the American Federation of
Labor, fit themselves comfortably into the in-
famous two-party system. This constitutes a be-
trayal of the exploited masses into the hands of
their capitalist enemies. The "non-partisan" pol-
icy is not simply an expression of political timidity,
of hesitation to take the initiative in forming a
new party; it is essentially based upon a political
unity with the capitalists. We may be sure that
if and when, under the pressure of the masses, a
third party is formed, these elements will adopt
the familiar devices of the Social Fascists to render
it subservient to the capitalist class.

Practice shows that the Progressive policies are
antagonistic to the interests of the exploited
masses. They cultivate in the worst forms the
democratic illusions so essential to capitalist con-
trol. For the unemployed the Progressives have
produced the typical masterpieces of the massacre
in Dearborn, for which Mayor Murphy, as well
as Ford, is responsible; and the Wisconsin Groves
Law, which, under the name of "unemployment
insurance," provides even less relief for the unem-
ployed than they now receive in many cities under
the Hoover charity-hand-out system. For the em-
ployed the Progressives have provided wage-cuts,
on the Hoover-Green model; example, the maneu-

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 239

vers of Pinchot in Pennsylvania with the U.M.W.
of A. bureaucrats to break the strikes of the min-
ers in the Pittsburgh and anthracite districts
against wage-cuts. As for the farmers, the Pro-
gressives have kept them thoroughly disorganized
by the non-partisan system: the Federal Farm
Board, with its wheat and cotton speculation and
enrichment of the rural bankers and rich farmers
at the expense of the poor farmers, is the fine
flower of Progressivism on the farms. Regarding
the Negroes, the policies of the Progressives, al-
though dressed up in radical phraseology, are in
practice indistinguishable from those of the ultra-
reactionaries : sufficient proof of this being the
enthusiastic support given to the candidacy of Gov-
ernor Roosevelt, Progressive Mogul, in the most
Bourbon sections of the South.

Progressivism is a grave danger to the working
class. This is because of the widespread existence
of petty bourgeois illusions among the workers.
The LaFollettes, Borahs, La Guardias, Norrises,
Pinchots, Murphys, etc., are disorganizers and de-
moralizers of the workers and poor farmers. The
Progressive bloc is just another lightning rod to
shield the capitalist profit edifice.

The Socialist party is the third party of capi-
talism. This is amply demonstrated by its history
in the United States and all other countries. The
Socialist party has nothing constructive to offer the
workers in their daily struggles now or for their

240 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

ultimate emancipation. The fact that this party
hides its capitalist face behind a pretense of radi-
calism makes it more, not less dangerous.

Already we have dealt in considerable detail
with the policies and activities of the Socialist
party. Its advocacy of capitalist trustification
under slogans of nationalization, cultivation of illu-
sions regarding "planned economy" under capital-
ism, support of the League of Nations, militarist
imperialism cloaked with pacifism, alliance with the
corrupt leadership of the A.F. of L., policy of
putting through wage-cuts by fake strikes, rule of
unions by gangsterism, systematic slander of the
Soviet Union and minimizing of the war danger,
etc., is all directly antagonistic to the working
class.

That is why the capitalists and their press look
with ever more favor upon the Socialist party.
The Norman Thomases are being groomed to play
in the United States some day the role of the Mac-
Donalds in Great Britain, Boncours in France,
Scheidemans in Germany, etc. The wage-cutting,
dole-slashing activities of the British Labor party
and the German Social Democracy in their attempt
to bolster up the decaying capitalist system pre-
sent clearly the perspective for which the Socialist
party is being built in this country.

The Socialist party all over the world is a main
pillar of the capitalist system. Its function is to
demoralize the workers' defense in the face of the

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS

capitalist offensive, to break up the workers'
counter-offensive against the capitalist system.
The Socialist party is a specialized section of the
capitalist machinery for exploiting the toiling
masses. It is particularly dangerous in that it
takes the workers, just breaking the ideological
chains of capitalist slavery, and confuses them with
a defense of capitalism under the pretense of fight-
ing for Socialism. The Socialist party stabs the
working class in the back. It, together with its
fringe elements of Musteites, Lovestoneites, Trot-
zkyites, etc., has nothing in common with So-
cialism.

The Present-Day Tasks of the American
Revolutionary Movement

THE TASKS of the Communist party in a given
country at a specified time, in carrying out its pro-
gram of class struggle, are, of course, determined
by the objective situation and the state of the
workers' mood and organization. Thus these tasks
vary in the several countries, from the building of
Socialism in the Soviet Union, open armed war-
fare in China, and preparations for an early
revolutionary crisis in Germany, to the most ele-
mentary phases of mass education, organization
and struggle in the United States, the stronghold
of world capitalism.

In the United States — and this is basic in Com-

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

munist strategy everywhere — the action program
of the Communist party has its starting point in
the every-day pressing economic demands of the
workers. It is not enough that the Party should
propagate its general slogans among the masses
and then organize them for the eventual revolu-
tion. Such a course, as Lenin so forcefully
pointed out in his famous pamphlet, The Infantile
Sickness of "Leftism" in Communism, would con-
demn the Party to isolation and sectarianism. For
the workers the class struggle is a never-ending
matter of their daily lives; constantly they are
confronted with the most urgent necessity to fight
against the employers, in defense of their interests.
The Communist party must lead in all these strug-
gles. It is in such fights that the workers become
class conscious and organized around the Com-
munist party. Never would the masses recognize
as their revolutionary Party one that ignored
these daily fights and confined itself to a high and
lofty agitation of revolutionary slogans.

It is a favorite slander, however, that the Com-
munist party utilizes the daily struggles of the
workers merely for agitational purposes. Norman
Thomas repeats this, saying that Communist im-
mediate demands are "designed to be impossible
and so to 'show up' the capitalist system." But
the truth is just the opposite: the Communist party
always places as immediate demands those mani-

« America's Way Out, p. 152.

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS

festly possible of achievement under capitalism
and then it makes the most determined effort to
win all it can of them in the struggle. This is be-
cause the Party has no interests apart from those
of the working class; it also realizes that such vic-
tories, instead of destroying the militancy of the
workers, stimulate it. Lenin called such reforms
or concessions forced from the employers "by-
products" of the revolutionary struggle. The
Party understands clearly that the workers logi-
cally expect that a Party which proposes eventu-
ally to overthrow the whole capitalist system should
know how to organize them to defend their inter-
ests here and now. As for "showing up" capital-
ism, this is done by agitation and propaganda and
by the daily experiences of the workers in the class
struggle, not by leading the workers to defeat in
strikes and other movements.

The Social Fascists try to create the legend that
the difference between them and the Communists
is that while they fight for immediate demands,
the Communists confine themselves simply to ulti-
mate aims. This is not so. The difference is that
while the Communists fight for the immediate de-
mands as well as the final goal, the Social Fascists
betray both.

In the present stage of development of the
working class and of the revolutionary struggle in
the United States the fight of the workers is essen-
tially a defensive struggle against the capitalist

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

offensive. On all fronts the employers, with the
government in the lead, are worsening the living
and working standards of the toilers through wage-
cuts, throwing millions of workers into unemploy-
ment, seizing the lands of poor farmers, shifting
the tax burden onto the producing masses, etc. It
is the policy of the Communist party to organize
the workers and farmers and to lead their resist-
ance to the capitalist offensive, to prevent the capi-
talists from finding a way out of their crisis at the
expense and further enslavement of the toiling
masses. That is why the Communist party is to
be found everywhere giving its fullest support to
all struggles of the workers and poor farmers
against the capitalist attack.

But the Communist party policy is not simply
to organize the defense; it seeks also to transform
the workers' defensive struggles into a counter-
offensive. It strives to unite the scattered fights
of the workers into broad class struggles and to
give them more of a political character. This
politicalization becomes the more urgent with the
sharpening offensive of the employers and their
increasing use of the State against the workers.
The general effects of politicalizing the workers'
struggle are to draw larger masses of workers into
the fight, to direct this fight against the State as
well as against the employers proper, and thus to
strengthen the workers' struggle in every respect.

This politicalization is brought about by the rais-

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 245

ing of political demands which grow out of the
very struggle itself, not merely by the active propa-
gation of the ultimate revolutionary program of
the Communist party. Thus during a strike de-
mands are made for the right to meet, to picket,
to strike, for the release of political prisoners, for
the adoption, enforcement or repeal of labor leg-
islation, against government arbitration, for the
withdrawal of troops, etc., and the workers are
mobilized in various ways for mass action in sup-
port of these demands. In this way, not only are
the workers educated to the class character of the
State, but the broadest class front and most mili-
tant action is secured in the struggle. In acute
conditions of class struggle this line of strategy
leads to the development of the mass political
strike, during which the more fundamental politi-
cal demands may be raised. In the question of
political demands, as well as of economic demands,
the central Communist strategy always turns
around the winning of the immediate struggle in
hand.

In the present period of intense capitalist offen-
sive against the workers, the question of immediate,
partial economic demands becomes of decisive
importance. The workers have to fight des-
perately for the very right to live. Becoming
ever more radicalized, they make this fight with
constantly sharpening militancy. Even the small-
est issues readily blaze into great conflagrations.

246 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

How quickly economic conflicts develop into major
political struggles was evidenced again by the re-
cent mutinies in the British and Chilean navies,
both of which began over wage-cuts. It is inter-
esting to recall, also, that the mutiny in the Ger-
man fleet at the end of the World War, although
prepared by the whole course of events, actually
began in a flare-up of the men because their ration
of soap had been cut off. All of which emphasizes
the correctness of the stress that the Communist
party places upon the question of practical partial
demands and the necessity of developing the scat-
tering economic fights of the workers onto a higher
political level.

In thus politicalizing the struggle, the Com-
munists come into sharpest conflict with the labor
reactionaries of the Socialist party and the A.F.
of L. type. As part of these misleaders' general
policy of choking back the workers' struggles, they
seek to keep these fights upon a purely economic
basis. They resist all attempts of the workers to
militantly fight the State, thus exposing them to
the sharp political attacks of the employers. A
typical example of this was the surrender of John
L. Lewis to the government injunction in the na-
tional coal strike of 1920 under the slogan of "We
can't fight the Government." Another outstand-
ing example of this treacherous policy was during
the British general strike of 1926. In this great
fight, with the bosses using every power of the gov-

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS

ernment to break the strike of the 5,000,000 work-
ers, the Social Fascist leaders, eager to find a way
to sell out the strike, put out the slogan that the
struggle was purely an economic one and they bit-
terly fought every effort to give it a political char-
acter. Thus the government was given a free hand
and a terrific defeat was suffered by the workers v

The Communist Party Program of Immediate
Demands

THIS is not the place for a detailed statement of
the program of action of the Communist party.
But at least an indication of its general character
may be given. As stated before, the Party bases
its immediate struggle upon partial demands cor-
responding to the most urgent necessities of the
toiling masses. The most important of these de-
mands are concentrated in the Party's 1932 elec-
tion platform, as follows :

1. UNEMPLOYMENT AND SOCIAL INSURANCE AT THE EX-
PENSE OF THE STATE AND EMPLOYERS.

2. Against Hoover's wage-cutting policy.

3. Emergency relief, without restrictions by the gov-
ernment and banks, for the poor farmers, exemption
of poor farmers from taxes, and from forced collec-
tion of debts.

4. Equal rights for the Negroes, and self-determination
for the Black Belt.

5. Against capitalist terror; against all forms of sup-
pression of the political rights of the workers.

248 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

6. Against imperialist war; for defense of the Chinese
people and of the Soviet Union.

The Communist party puts the question of un-
employment insurance in the very center of its im-
mediate program. It demands that the federal
government institute a system of insurance, on the
basis of full wages,7 for all unemployed and part-
time workers, the necessary funds to be paid en-
tirely by the employers and the State and to be
raised by the allocation of all war funds, a capital
levy, increased taxes upon the rich, etc. The
Party, pending the enactment of adequate unem-
ployment insurance legislation, demands special
cash relief from the states and municipalities,
lower rents, free food for school children of the
unemployed, free street car fare, public works at
union wages, abolition of forced labor on such jobs,
etc. It demands that the insurance and relief sys-
tems be administered by the workers themselves.
The Party also demands an adequate system of
social legislation for old age, sickness, maternity,
etc. These demands it supports by militant dem-
onstrations, hunger marches, etc. It endorses the
Workers' Unemployment Insurance Bill.

The Party concretizes its fight against the
Hoover wage-cutting program into a militant
strike policy. It also fights against the speed-up,

7 In 1929 average American wages yearly did not exceed $1200, a
figure ranging from $300 to $1000 less than bare cost-of-living budg-
ets of the Labor Department and other capitalist institutions.

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 249

against mass lay-offs of workers, for the 7-hour day
without reduction in weekly wages, (with a 6-hour
day for the youth, for miners, railroaders, and
workers in dangerous and unhealthful industries),
for the adoption and enforcement of adequate leg-
islation regarding safety and sanitation in in-
dustry.

The Party lays the utmost stress upon its de-
mands for the Negroes. It demands full economic,
political and social equality for them; it fights to
eliminate the entire system of discrimination to
which the Negroes are subjected in industry, in
the distribution of unemployment relief, in segre-
gated dwelling districts, in hotels and restaurants,
in trade unions, in the courts, in political activities ;
that is, the whole Jim-Crow outrage; it demands
death for lynchers, and it fights for the right of
self-determination for the Negro nation in the
Black Belt of the South.

For the farmers the Party demands immediate
emergency cash relief from the government, for
those crushed by the burden of low prices, high
taxes, usurious debts, etc.; the exemption of poor
farmers from the tax burden, abolition of foreclos-
ures upon land for non-payment of mortgages, the
full rights of organization and free speech, etc.

The Party fights against the monstrous tax bur-
den being heaped from year to year upon the toil-
ing masses and demands that this be shifted upon
the rich. It opposes the sales tax and fights for

250 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

higher inheritance taxes, surtaxes, etc. It de-
mands drastic curtailment in the salaries of gov-
ernment officials and opposes all wage-cuts for
government workers.

The Party fights militantly against the growing
imperialist war danger. It mobilizes the workers
to fight against the robber war in China and to de-
fend the Soviet Union. It demands the with-
drawal of American armed forces from China. It
demands recognition of and trade relations with
the U.S.S.R. It calls upon the workers not to
transport war munitions for Japanese imperialism.
It fights against all phases of American imperial-
ism's program to militarize the American people.
It gives active support to the masses in Latin-
America in their fight against American imperial-
ism. It educates the masses in the revolutionary
Leninist strategy against war.

The Party fights against the developing terror-
ism and suppression of the workers' rights. It de-
mands the rights of free speech, free assembly, and
to strike and picket. It combats injunctions by a
policy of mass violation. It organizes workers'
defense corps in mass organizations to defend them
from the violence of the employers and their
agents. It fights against the finger-printing, de-
portation and other methods of discrimination used
towards the foreign-born workers. It demands
the release of all class war prisoners, the annul-

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 251

ment of anti- Syndicalist laws, abolition of va-
grancy laws, etc.

For the young workers the Young Communist
League, supported by the Party, demands the
abolition of child labor, the establishment of the
6-hour day, equal pay with adult workers, rest
periods in industry, the right to vote, etc. In the
various strikes the Y.C.L. always raises special
youth demands. In schools and colleges it organ-
izes the students and develops their struggle for
better conditions. It also organizes the youth in
their own Y.C.L. nuclei, and it works for the or-
ganization of special youth sections of local trade
unions to deal with particular youth problems and
to develop the necessary special activities involved
in the organization of the youth.

The Party makes special demands for women
workers, including equal pay with men, special pro-
tection in industry, maternity insurance, etc., and
it incorporates them in its immediate program in
given struggles. For the ex-service men it de-
mands the full payment of the bonus ; for those now
in the army and navy service better wages, food,
housing, etc. It demands the repeal of the 18th
Amendment and the Volstead Act.

In short, in every phase of life where capitalist
exploitation and persecution bear down upon the
masses, the Communist party comes forward with
partial demands corresponding to the most imme-
diate needs of these masses. But in so doing, it

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

does not fail to point out that the final solution of
their intolerable situation can be achieved only by
the overthrow of the capitalist system and the es-
tablishment of a Workers' and Farmers' gov-
ernment.

A Program of Class Struggle

THE COMMUNIST PARTY bases its activities upon
the principles of the class struggle, both with re-
gard to its every-day struggles and its ultimate
revolutionary goal. It relentlessly fights against
the policy of class collaboration practiced by the
Socialist party and the A.F. of L. leaders. World-
wide experience has fully demonstrated the fact
that the workers cannot go along with the bosses
as "friendly partners." The capitalists and the
workers are class enemies, with mutually hostile in-
terests. The exploiters and the exploited are natu-
ral political foes. The relations between them
depend upon the question of power. The workers
can get from the employers only what they have
the power to take. The A.F. of L. theory (which
corresponds to the Socialist party practice) of the
"harmony of interest between capital and labor"
is the theory of the surrender of the working class
to the bourgeoisie.

Communist action is based upon the slogan of
"Class Against Class"; that is, the working class
against the capitalist class. This slogan expresses

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 253

the elementary fighting policy of the revolutionary
movement. In applying it, the Communist party
actively promotes the mass organization of the
workers, regardless of political opinion, into trade
unions, unemployed councils, organizations to de-
fend the rights of Negroes, ex-servicemen's
leagues, labor defense and strike relief bodies,
leagues of poor farmers, proletarian sports or-
ganizations, labor fraternal insurance societies,
organizations to defend the foreign born, societies
of working class culture, etc., etc. Where no mass
organizations exist in these fields the Party takes
the initiative in forming them; where such are al-
ready in existence and are headed by conservative
officials, the Party follows the policy of building
an opposition within them and fighting for the
revolutionary program and leadership. This is the
so-called boring-from-within policy.

The application of the "Class Against Class"
policy requires the making of united front move-
ments with workers who, while not prepared to
accept the whole revolutionary program of the
Communist party, nevertheless are willing to
struggle for immediate, partial demands. It also
means the carrying on of joint struggles with the
poor farmers and impoverished sections of the city
petty bourgeoisie. But in all such united front
movements the aim always is for the workers to
lead and for the attack to be directed against the
capitalist class and its government. By the use

254 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

of the united front the fighting ranks of the work-
ers are extended far beyond the limits of the exist-
ing revolutionary organizations; the united front
bridges the gap between the organized and un-
organized workers and links them up for common
struggle. United front organs may take a variety
of forms, such as joint strike committees, shop com-
mittees, grievance committees, relief committees,
defense committees, etc., being composed in each
case of representatives of all the unions, A.F. of L.
and revolutionary, as well as of the unorganized
workers in the given situation. The united front is
organized from the bottom; that is, not with the
reactionary leaders of the various labor organiza-
tions, but with the rank and file workers.

The Communist party bases its work directly
upon the mills, mines, and factories. Its prin-
ciple is to make every shop a fortress for Com-
munism. It follows closely the life of the workers
in the industries, adapting its immediate program
of struggle to their needs. It concentrates its
work upon the heavy industries and those of a war
character. The Party and the revolutionary
unions are organized especially for this intense
shop work. Instead of being based upon terri-
torial branches, as is the Socialist party, the Com-
munist party has as its basic unit the shop nucleus ;
the TUUL unions are based upon the shop branch,
instead of the craft and general locals of the A.F.
of L. type.

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 255

In carrying out its class struggle program the
Communist party practices revolutionary parlia-
mentarism. It places candidates during elections
and makes every effort to elect them. It com-
bines its parliamentary action inside legislative
bodies with its mass action outside and fights to
force all possible concessions from the government.
It utilizes the election campaigns to educate the
workers and to mobilize them for every phase of
its program on the economic and political fields.
It seizes upon these periods of general political dis-
cussion to confront the reactionary program of the
capitalists and their Social Fascist agents with
the revolutionary program of the workers. Where
the Party elects its candidates to legislative bodies
they make use of these public forums to expose
the capitalist character of the government and to
bring forward the Communist program in its vari-
ous phases. In all its parliamentary activities the
Communist party makes it clear to the workers
that the capitalist democracy is a sham and that
there must be no illusions about peacefully cap-
turing the State for the working class.

The Communist party organizes its struggles
upon the basis of mass action of the workers. It is
opposed to individual acts of terror. Such terror-
ism weakens the workers' struggle by tending to
substitute individual action for mass action and by
exposing the movement to the destructive work of
agents provocateurs. The workers' daily strug-

256 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

gles are to be won and their emancipation finally
achieved, not by the desperate acts of isolated
heroes, but by the resolute action of the great
masses of workers.

A cornerstone of the Communist class struggle
policy is a ruthless fight against the Social Fascist
leaders, especially those of the "left," phrase-
mongering type. "Class Against Class" implies
a war to the finish against such elements, who are
part of the oppressive machinery of the capitalist
class. They are enemies within the gates of the
working class and must be treated as such. They
head the labor movement only in order to behead
it. They are a menace and an obstacle to all
struggle by the workers. With their prestige as
labor leaders, their demagogy is especially demoral-
izing; with their control of the workers' mass
organizations, they are able to effectively sabotage
the struggle. It is idle to try to "convince" the
Social Fascist leaders or to "force them to fight
by mass pressure," because they are class enemies
of the workers. They must be politically ob-
literated. To accomplish this is a first condition
for successful working class struggle and it is one
never lost sight of by the Communist party.

The Communist party draws a clear line of dis-
tinction between the organized workers and their
Social Fascist leaders. It calls upon the workers
to take the control of their struggles into their
own hands. The policy of independent leadership

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 257

by the rank and file workers is fundamental in the
general Communist action strategy. The Party
promotes the formation of the revolutionary oppo-
sition in reformist trade unions; it organizes the
workers to oust their reactionary leaders, to them-
selves take over the leadership of their strikes and
other struggles, to break through the cliques of
gangsters who control the local unions and sup-
press all trade union democracy, to disregard the
maze of trade union legalism that has been built
up by the bureaucracy to prevent the development
of real struggles.

In the trade union field the necessity for inde-
pendent rank and file leadership has led to the
formation of several independent revolutionary in-
dustrial unions in the mining, textile, metal, ma-
rine, needle and other industries. These are
united in a national center, the Trade Union Unity
League, formed in 1929 through a reorganization
of the Trade Union Educational League. The
old TUEL was made up solely of revolutionary
opposition groups in the reformist unions; the
TUUL is composed of both revolutionary opposi-
tions and industrial unions, with its center of
gravity in the latter. The formation of the inde-
pendent revolutionary unions was made impera-
tive by the systematic sabotage of the struggle
by the more and more Fascist A.F. of L. leaders
through open strike-breaking, suppression of
democracy in the unions, mass expulsions, be-

258 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

trayal of the unorganized, etc. The TUUL is not
a dual organization in the sense of the I.W.W.
It does not make war upon the A.F. of L. unions
as such, but against their reactionary leaders.
With the A.F. of L. rank and file the TUUL
makes united fronts and conducts joint strike
struggles. It organizes and supports the work of
the A.F. of L. opposition movements. The TUUL
revolutionary unions concentrate their attention
upon the great masses of unorganized who make
up about five-sixths of the working class, build-
ing separate organizations where the fighting spirit
of the workers, lack of mass A.F. of L. unions,
etc., make this course the most practical one in
defense of their interests. The TUUL is the
American section of the Red International of
Labor Unions. It is made up of workers of all
political opinions. Its relations towards the Com-
munist party are those of mutual support and co-
operation in the struggle, without organizational
affiliation.

The Communist party of the United States, in
line with its program of class struggle, unites with
the revolutionary workers of the world. It is the
American section of the Communist International.
The Communist International carries out a united
revolutionary policy on a world scale, with the nec-
essary adaptations for the special conditions in the
various countries. The Communist International
is a disciplined world party; only such a party can

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 259

defeat world imperialism. Its leading party, by
virtue of its great revolutionary experience, is the
Russian Communist party. In its general work
it applies the principles of democratic centralism,
even as its affiliated parties do in their respective
countries. That is, the policies of the Interna-
tional are worked out jointly with the several
parties and then applied in the usual disciplined
Communist way. Charges of the Matthew Woll
brand that these parties "take orders from Mos-
cow" are ridiculous. The united world revolu-
tionary policy of the Communist International
differs fundamentally from that of the Socialist
Second International, whose autonomous sections
follow the policies of their respective national
bourgeoisie.

It is only with the foregoing Communist prin-
ciples and program of class struggle that the work-
ers can defeat the efforts of the capitalists to find
a way out of the crisis through more unemploy-
ment, wage-cuts, and mass starvation, more Fascist
terrorism and the unleashing of devastating war.
Under the leadership of the Communist party and
following out its class struggle policy, the workers
can defend their interests here and now and they
will ultimately traverse fully the revolutionary way
out of the crisis by overthrowing capitalism and
establishing a Soviet system.

260 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

The American Workers and the Revolution

THE CAPITALISTS and their henchmen in this coun-
try are very certain of the innate conservatism of the
American working class. They confidently assure
themselves that, no matter what may happen in
other countries, the toiling masses here will have
nothing to do with Socialism. And, on the surface
of things, the workers of the United States are the
most conservative of any great industrial country.
This is primarily because, living in the land of the
most powerful and rapidly rising imperialism, their
standards of living have been somewhat higher than
those in other countries. Besides, their class con-
sciousness has been greatly hindered by the so-
called democratic traditions in the United States,
harking back to the days of free land. There has
also been a retarding influence in the lack of homo-
geneity among the workers — many races, many
nationalities, many traditions. All of which fac-
tors capitalism has thoroughly understood how to
exploit in the unparalleled flood of propaganda
that it has poured into the workers through the
countless newspapers, schools, churches, labor
leaders, politicians, radios, motion pictures, etc.

But this conservatism is more apparent than
real; it is merely a surface and temporary indica-
tion. It is only a few years since the capitalists
of Great Britain and Germany also boasted about
the conservatism of their workers. They could do

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 261

this because both of these countries were on a rising
curve of imperialist development. It was possible
at least for the masses of their workers to live.
Illusions about the possibilities of capitalist de-
velopment flourished among them. But now how
changed is the situation. In Germany the workers
are rapidly becoming revolutionized and in Great
Britain they are traveling the same road, if at a
somewhat slower tempo. This revolutionizatiqn
of the workers develops because Germany and
Great Britain have been caught deeply in the
maelstrom of the general capitalist crisis: Ger-
many, crushed by its imperialist rivals, approaches
a revolutionary upheaval; Great Britain, ousted
from its position as world industrial leader, slips
deeper and deeper into chronic crisis. The erst-
while "conservative" workers of these countries,
now facing mass starvation, are beginning to see
the logic of the situation and are gradually pre-
paring themselves for the fight to overthrow capi-
talism and to establish Socialism.

The American workers inevitably must go in the
same direction and for the same reasons, although,
for the causes above-mentioned, their pace is as yet
much slower. A sure radicalization is being
brought about by 30 to 40 cents a day wages for
Kentucky miners,8 $3.50 wages for a 70-hour week
for Southern textile workers,9 and similar condi-

s Theodore Dreiser, Harlan Miners Speak.
9 American Federationist, Mar., 1932.

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

tions in the other industries. Starvation wages are
destroying the capitalistic illusions of American
workers and 25 cent wheat is making the poor
farmers their allies. Especially are the hunger
policies of the Hoover government in the unem-
ployment question a potent factor in the growing
radicalization. The time will come when the capi-
talists of this country will realize that one of the
greatest mistakes ever made by a ruling class was
that of forcing the millions of unemployed to go
without the necessaries of life while the warehouses
were bursting with riches.

Under the pressure of the deepening crisis the
workers are throwing off their conservatism with
a speed and decisiveness that will soon startle
the ruling class. The British bourgeoisie were
astounded at the recent sudden and significant
mass upheavals in St. Johns and Auckland. In
Chapter I we have pointed out some of the signs
of the new radicalization. But doubtless the proc-
ess has gone faster and farther than the open signs
indicate and than even the closest observers realize.
The radicalization is largely hidden because the
American working class, almost completely un-
organized industrially and politically, shamefully
betrayed by the trade union leaders and terrorized
in the industries, has great obstacles in the way of
expressing its discontent. It has to be of an ex-
plosive character before it appears upon the sur-
face. The pressure now rises dangerously.

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 263

The capitalists are congratulating themselves
upon the lack of great mass struggles of the work-
ers against the wholesale reductions in their living
standards during the present crisis. The Wall
Street Journal, (Jan. 5, 1932), states: "It is doubt-
ful whether so rapid and extensive a deflation of
the wage earner's income has ever before taken
place in the United States, with so nearly a total
absence of open conflict between masters and
men. . . It seems a far cry back to the Homestead
riots of 1892, to the Pullman and railroad strikes
of 2 years later, or even to the Colorado mine dis-
orders of 1914." Bourgeois economists and writ-
ers ascribe the dearth of big strikes to a lack of
militancy on the part of the workers, and charac-
teristically, the Socialist, Norman Thomas, agrees
with them by giving as the reason "the docility of
labor." 10

The fallacy of this argumentation is readily ap-
parent. At the door of the American Federation
of Labor lies the chief responsibility for the failure
of the working class to develop greater mass resist-
ance against the huge lowering of their living
standards. Had this organization, with its 2,500,-
000 members and its standing as the traditional
labor movement, issued a call to strike against
wage-cuts and to fight for unemployment insur-
ance undoubtedly many big strikes and unemploy-
ment demonstrations would have occurred. But

10 As I See It, p. 166.

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

the A.F. of L., on the contrary, has used all its
power and prestige to prevent struggle. Repeat-
ing the arguments of the bosses, it has unresistingly
accepted wage-cuts and the unemployment hunger
program of the government. Besides, it has un-
hesitatingly used strike-breaking methods (among
the worst of which were the fake strikes, or lock-
outs in the Socialist-controlled needle trades) to
defeat the workers who tried to beat the wage-cuts
by struggle. This deadening influence of the A.F.
of L. extended far beyond the ranks of its organ-
ization into the unorganized industries. The A.F.
of L. leadership has been the principal instrument
of the bosses to force the workers to accept lower
conditions of living. All of which goes to show
the great value of this leadership to the employers
and to explain their systematic support of it.

The intensification of the crisis will inevitably
bring with it a sharpening and broadening of the
class struggle, despite all efforts of the bosses, the
government and the A.F. of L.-S.P. leadership
to check it. Consider the meaning of the Ford
Hunger March, in which four workers were killed
and many wounded by the police; just a few years
ago the workers in the Ford plant were rated the
best off in the world. Now they find themselves
starving and ruthlessly shot down when they de-
mand relief. Their answer is a violent mass re-
sentment and a rapid building of the Communist

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 265

party, the Unemployed Councils and the revolu-
tionary Automobile Workers' Union.

Or take the case of the Kentucky miners : facing
starvation wages, murderous terrorism by com-
pany gunmen and police thugs, wholesale arrest
and railroading of militant workers, flagrant be-
trayal by the U.M.W. of A., they turned to the
Communist party and the National Miners Union
for leadership. These miners, almost without ex-
ception, are American-born. They and their for-
bears for generations back are of the old pioneer
stock. They are intensely patriotic and religious;
race prejudice against the Negro has been culti-
vated amongst them from their earliest childhood.
The coal operators, realizing these facts and
believing that they made the miners immune to
revolutionary leadership regardless of their griev-
ances, met the advance of the National Miners
Union into the Kentucky-Tennessee coal regions
with a franti2 appeal to the prejudices of the
miners. They made it appear that the developing
strike was an attempt to overthrow the government,
that it meant wiping out religion and the estab-
lishment of Negro domination. But the miners
stood firm in the face of this unprecedented "red
hysteria"; the strike went on despite all the
demagogy and terrorism. Communism has es-
tablished itself firmly among the American miners
of the Kentucky and Tennessee coal fields.

Which way the farmers will go may be gathered

266 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

from the report of Professors Hutchinson and
Holt on conditions in Michigan: "Then there are
the farmers now talking the language of revolt.
Their backs are against the wall and it will take
only a few dramatic mortgage sales of lands held
by families for two generations to start the fire-
works. For them the passing of the American
farmer to peasantry will not happen without a
struggle in the spirit of 1776."

It is an illusion to think that the conservative
American workers must first pass through the
stage of social reformism before they will accept
the Communist program. Doubtless, large num-
bers of them will fall victims to social reformism,
hence, the great danger of the Socialist party and
the A.F. of L. leadership. But experience already
amply demonstrates that the Communist party,
with its program of partial demands and united
front policy, coupled with its ultimate revolution-
ary objectives, can and does successfully mobilize
masses of these workers just breaking from the in-
fluence of the two old parties.

Dearborn, Kentucky, England (Ark.), Law-
rence, Pittsburgh coal strike, etc., reflect the new
spirit of the American class struggle. The capi-
talists, in the midst of the sharpening general
crisis of capitalism, are determined to force the
living standards of American toilers down to Euro-
pean levels, or lower. The workers will respond
to this offensive by increasing class consciousness

REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT OF CRISIS 267

and mass struggle. More and more they will turn
to the Communist party for leadership, and even-
tually they will be joined by decisive masses of
the ever-more ruthlessly exploited poor farmers.
The toiling masses of the United States will not
submit to the capitalist way out of the crisis, which
means still deeper poverty and misery, but will
take the revolutionary way out to Socialism. The
working class of this country will tread the path
of the workers of the world, to the overthrow of
capitalism and the establishment of a Soviet gov-
ernment. Lenin was profoundly correct when he
said in his Letter to American Workingmen, of
Aug. 20, 1918:

"The American working class will not follow the lead
of its bourgeoisie. It will go with us against its bour-
geoisie. The whole history of the American people gives
me this confidence, this conviction."

CHAPTER V

THE UNITED SOVIET STATES
OF AMERICA

THE MARXIAN principle holds true that the pre-
vailing mode of production and exchange deter-
mines the character of the general organization in
a given society. Thus the pioneer British capitalist
society, based upon the private ownership of indus-
try and the exploitation of the workers, forecast the
type which, with only minor variations, came later
to be developed by the whole capitalist world. Its
parliamentary democracy, rampant patriotism,
robot-like education of the masses, reformist trade
unionism, etc., fitted naturally into the capitalist
scheme of things everywhere.

By the same principle, the Soviet Union now
forecasts the general outlines of the new social
order that the world is approaching. The Soviet
system was not an invention. Its basic institutions
arose naturally from the economic and political
necessities of workers and peasants freeing them-
selves from capitalist exploitation. Thus, for the
United States as well as other countries, the Soviet
Union is a plain indicator of the society that is to

268

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 269

be, taking into account minor variations for special
conditions in the several lands. It foreshadows the
broad lines along which the future Soviet America
will develop. Here our task is not to work out
all the details of an American Soviet system, as
that would exceed the scope of this book, but to
trace out, upon the basis of actual experience to
date, the general structure and workings of such
a regime.

From capitalism to Communism, through the
intermediary stage of Socialism; that is the way
American society, like society in general, is headed.
It represents the main line of march of the human
race to the next higher social stage in its historical
advance. It is the trend to which all the economic,
political and social forces of today are contributing.

The American revolution, when the workers have
finally seized power, will develop even more swiftly
in all its phases than has the Russian revolution.
This is because in the United States objective con-
ditions are more ripe for revolution than they were
in old Russia. In his work, Imperialism., Lenin
states :

"Capitalism, in its imperialist phase, arrives at the
threshold of the complete socialization of production.
To some extent it causes the capitalists, whether they
like it or no, to enter a new social order, which marks
the transition from free competition to the socialization
of production. Production becomes social, but appro-

270 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

priation remains private. The social means of produc-
tion remain the private property of a few."

This means that in such a highly-industrialized
country as the United States the industrial base for
Socialism is already at hand. The great problem
before the workers is to get the political power.
The Russian workers, however, not only had to
conquer power but also to build a great industrial
system. At the Eighth Congress of Soviets, in
1920, Lenin declared that, "Communism is the
Soviet power plus the electrification of the coun-
try." In the United States, the problem of the
American working class in achieving Socialism
may be summed up, as Browder has put it, as
the present American industrial technique plus
Soviets.

Besides this more favorable industrial base,
American workers, once in control, will have other
advantages which will greatly speed the tempo of
revolutionary development. These are, first, the
vast experience accumulated in the Russian revolu-
tion, and, second, the practical assistance of the
Soviet governments existing at the time of the
American revolution. These are enormous ad-
vantages. As for the Russian workers, they were
pioneers blazing the revolutionary trail. They had
to work out for themselves a maze of unique
problems and to struggle against a whole hostile
capitalist world. The sum of all which is that the
period of transition from capitalism to Socialism

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 271

in the United Soviet States will be much shorter
and easier than in the U.S.S.R.

The American Soviet Government

WHEN the American working class actively enters
the revolutionary path of abolishing capitalism it
will orientate upon the building of Soviets, not
upon the adaptation of the existing capitalist gov-
ernment. Capitalist governments have nothing in
common with proletarian governments. They are
especially constructed throughout to maintain the
rulership of the bourgeoisie. In the revolutionary
struggle they are smashed and Soviet governments
established, built according to the requirements of
the toiling masses.

The building of Soviets is begun not after the
revolution but before. When the eventual revolu-
tionary crisis becomes acute the workers begin the
establishment of Soviets. The Soviets are not only
the foundation of the future Workers' State, but
also the main instruments to mobilize the masses
for revolutionary struggle. The decisions of the
Soviets are enforced by the armed Red Guard of
the workers and peasants and by the direct seizure
of the industry through factory committees. A
revolutionary American working class will follow
this general course, which is the way of proletarian
revolution.

The American Soviet government will be or-

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

ganized along the broad lines of the Russian
Soviets. Local Soviets, the base of the whole
Soviet State, will be established in all cities, towns
and villages. Local Soviets combine in themselves
the legislative, executive and judicial functions.
Representation, based on occupation instead of
residence and property, comes directly from the
shops, mines, farms, schools, workers' organiza-
tions, army, navy, etc. The principle of recall of
representatives applies throughout. Citizenship
is restricted to those who do useful work, capital-
ists, landlords, clericals and other non-producers
being disfranchised.

The local Soviets will be combined by direct rep-
resentation into county, state, and national Soviets.
The national Soviet government, with its capital in
Chicago or some other great industrial center, will
consist of a Soviet Congress, made up of local dele-
gates and meeting annually, or as often as need
be, to work out the general policies of the govern-
ment. Between its meetings the government will
be carried on by a broad Central Executive Com-
mittee, meeting every few months. This C.E.C.
will elect a small Presidium and a Council of
Commissars, made up of the heads of the various
government departments, who will carry on the
day-to-day work.

The American Soviet government will join with
the other Soviet governments in a world Soviet
Union. There will also be, very probably, some

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 273

form of continental union. The American revolu-
tion will doubtless carry with it all those countries
of the three Americas that have not previously
accomplished the revolution.

The Soviet court system will be simple, speedy
and direct. The judges, chosen by the corre-
sponding Soviets, will be responsible to them.
The Supreme Court, instead of being dictatorial
and virtually legislative, as in the United States,
will be purely juridical and entirely under the con-
trol of the C.E.C. The civil and criminal codes
will be simplified, the aim being to proceed directly
and quickly to a correct decision. In the acute
stages of the revolutionary struggle special courts
to fight the counter-revolution will probably be
necessary. The pest of lawyers will be abolished.
The courts will be class-courts, definitely warring
against the class enemies of the toilers. They will
make no hypocrisy like capitalist courts, which,
while pretending to deal out equal justice to all
classes, in reality are instruments of the capitalist
State for the repression and exploitation of the
toiling masses.

The American Soviet government will be the
dictatorship of the proletariat. In Chapter II we
explained this dictatorship as the revolutionary
government of the workers and toiling farmers.
In the proletarian dictatorship the working class is
the leader by virtue of its revolutionary program,
superior organization and greater numbers. To-

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

wards the farmers, the attitude of the government
will vary from an open alliance with the poor farm-
ers and cooperation with the middle farmers, to
open hostility against the big, exploiting land-
owners. Towards the city intelligentsia and petty
bourgeoisie generally, its attitude will be one of
friendliness and cooperation, insofar as these ele-
ments break with the old order and support the
new. The new Workers' government, as part of
its task of building Socialism, necessarily will have
to hold firmly in check the counter-revolutionary
elements who seek to overthrow or sabotage the
new regime. To suppose that the powerful
American capitalist class and its vast numbers of
hangers-on will tamely submit to the loss of their
power to the workers would be to ignore the whole
history of that class. The mildness or severity of
the repressive measures used by the workers to liq-
uidate this class politically will depend directly
upon the character of the latter's resistance.
While the whole trend of the revolutionary work-
ers is against violence, they always have an iron
fist for counter-revolution.

In order to defeat the class enemies of the revo-
lution, the counter-revolutionary intrigues within
the United States and the attacks of foreign capi-
talist countries from without, the proletarian dic-
tatorship must be supported by the organized
armed might of the workers, soldiers, local militia,
etc. In the early stages of the revolution, even

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 275

before the seizure of power, the workers will or-
ganize the Red Guard. Later on this loosely con-
structed body becomes developed into a firmly-knit,
well-disciplined Red Army.

The leader of the revolution in all its stages is
the Communist party. With its main base among
the industrial workers, the Party makes a bloc with
the revolutionary farmers and impoverished city
petty bourgeoisie, drawing under its general lead-
ership such revolutionary groups and organizations
as these classes may have. Under the dictatorship
all the capitalist parties — Republican, Democratic,
Progressive, Socialist, etc. — will be liquidated, the
Communist party functioning alone as the Party
of the toiling masses. Likewise, will be dissolved
all other organizations that are political props of
the bourgeois rule, including chambers of com-
merce, employers' associations, rotary clubs,
American Legion, Y.M.C.A., and such fraternal
orders as the Masons, Odd Fellows, Elks, Knights
of Columbus, etc.

A Soviet government will provide the workers
and poor farmers with the political instrument nec-
essary to defend their interests. The whole pur-
pose of such a government will be to advance the
welfare of those who do useful work. This is not
the case with the present government of the United
States. It is dominated by the Morgans, Mellons
and other big bankers and industrialists. Its func-
tion is to protect the interests of the capitalist

276 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

class — in first line finance capital — at the ex-
pense of the working masses. Every piece of
legislation, every strike, every demonstration of
the unemployed illustrates this afresh. In no
matter what field, wherever the interests of the
workers are involved, they find the powers of the
government arrayed against them. The Ameri-
can government is as much the property of the
capitalists as their mills, mines, factories and land.
Only a Soviet government can and will represent
the will of the workers.

The establishment of an American Soviet gov-
ernment will mark the birth of real democracy in
the United States. For the first time the toilers
will be free, with industry and the government in
their own hands. Now they are enslaved: the
industries and the government are the property of
the ruling class. The right to vote and all the cur-
rent talk about democracy are only so many screens
to hide the capitalist autocracy and to make it more
palatable to the masses. Consider the economic
and political gulf between the Southern textile
workers slaving for $5 a week and the rich South-
ern capitalists; between the hungry unemployed
workers in the Northern cities and the fat capital-
ist parasite masters lolling the Winters through at
Palm Beach; between the semi-slave Negroes in
the South and their exploiters; between the out-
rageous treatment visited upon Mooney and Bill-
ings, Sacco and Vanzetti and many other class war

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 277

prisoners and the protection given to the Falls,
Daughertys and the whole clique of capitalist rob-
bers of the poor — then one gets the true measure
of the American capitalist "democracy" and "free-
dom." Ambassador Gerard blurted out the truth
that the American government is a capitalist dic-
tatorship when he declared that 59 bankers and
captains of industry are the real rulers of the
United States.

The Expropriation of the Expropriators

"The victorious proletariat utilizes the conquest of
power as a lever of economic revolution, i.e., the revolu-
tionary transformation of the property relations of capi-
talism into relations of the Socialist mode of production.
The starting point of this great economic revolution is
the expropriation of the landlords and capitalists, i.e.,
the conversion of the monopolistic property of the bour-
geoisie into the property of the proletarian State." *

After providing for the emergency defense and
provisioning requirements, the first steps of an
American Workers' and Farmers' government,
which is the dictatorship of the proletariat, will be
directed towards the revolutionary nationalization
or socialization of the large privately-owned and
State capitalist undertakings.

In industry, transport and communication this
will mean the immediate taking over by the State
of all large factories, mines and power plants,

i Program of the Communist International.

278 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

together with all municipal and State industries;
the whole transport services of railroads, water-
ways, airways, electric car lines, hus lines, etc. ; the
entire communication organization, including tele-
graphs, telephones, post office, radio, etc.

In agriculture it will involve the early confisca-
tion of the large landed estates in town and
country, including church property, together with
their buildings, factories, live stock, etc., and also
the whole body of forests, mineral deposits, lakes,
rivers, etc.

In finance it will mean the nationalization of the
banking system and its concentration around a
central State bank; the taking over of the depart-
ment stores, chain stores, and other large wholesale
and retail trading organizations; the setting up
of a State monopoly of foreign trade; the cancel-
lation of all government debts, reparations, war
loans, etc., to the big foreign and home capitalists.

The socialization program will be carried
through on the basis of confiscation without re-
muneration, except for special consideration to
small investors. Such a program naturally evokes
loud protest from capitalists and the defenders of
private property, especially the Social Fascists.
The latter's idea, again expressed by Norman
Thomas in his book, America's Way Out, is for
the workers to buy the industries and land from
their capitalist owners. Thomas even proposes the
absurd plan that, through holding companies, the

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 279

workers can secure control with a minority of the
stock.

Such Social Fascist proposals have nothing in
common with Socialism. They represent a defi-
nite support of the capitalist class and the land-
lords in their claims for the right to exploit the
workers; they seek to conserve the dominant
position of these classes in a new form, State
capitalism. The workers will never buy out the
capitalists, nor could they if they would. There
is no warrant in common-sense or historical prece-
dent for the workers to buy the industries and natu-
ral resources from the present ruling class. In
confiscating this property of the big landlords and
capitalists, the workers and poor farmers will sim-
ply be taking back that which has been ruthlessly
stolen from them. This lesson of expropriation
without compensation by a revolutionary class has
been amply taught in the British, French, Russian
and many other revolutions. The revolutionary
American colonists did not compensate the British
landlords; the Northern capitalists did not pay
the Southern planters when they transformed the
Negro chattel slaves into wage slaves; and the
working class will follow the same course of revo-
lutionary confiscation.

The socialization of the key sections of industry,
commerce, agriculture and finance will lay a solid
economic foundation for the building of Socialism.
Doubtless, private property will survive in small

280 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

farms, in petty industry and in trade. But this
will be only temporary. With the consolidation
and growth of Socialism and the general spread of
well-being all the land will eventually and without
serious difficulty be nationalized, and all industry
will be concentrated into the Socialist Soviet
economy.

The Improvement of the Toilers* Conditions

THE CENTRAL purpose of the revolution is to con-
quer political power for the workers and to
fundamentally improve the economic and social
conditions of the producing masses. Immediately
an American Soviet government is established, the
shut-down factories will be opened. Production
will be started to relieve the impoverished work-
ers and farmers. The great stores of necessities,
now piled up and unsaleable, will be released to
the masses. The unemployed will be fed, housed
and given work. Pending any delay in putting the
industries into full operation, the unemployed will
be paid social insurance on the basis of full wages.
The general policy of the Soviet government will
be to at once put into effect at least the immediate
demands that the workers are now demanding of
capitalism, and which we have discussed in the pre-
vious chapter. Wages will be sharply raised, espe-
cially for the lower-paid categories ; then there will
be established the 7-hour day or, very probably,

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 281

less, with a correspondingly still shorter workday
for young workers and those engaged in dangerous
occupations; there will also be the development of
the system of social insurance against unemploy-
ment, old age, sickness, accidents, etc., on a full
wage basis; the abolition of the many discrimina-
tions against Negroes, women, and young workers
in industry; the establishment of free medical
services, vacations for workers, etc.

The Soviet government will initiate at once a
vast housing program. All houses and other
buildings will be socialized. The great hotels,
apartments, city palaces, country homes, country
clubs, etc., of the rich will be taken over and utilized
by the workers for dwellings, rest homes, chil-
dren's clubs, sanatoria, etc. The best of the sky-
scrapers, emptied of their thousand and one brands
of parasites, will be used to house the new
government institutions, the trade unions, coopera-
tives, Communist party, etc. The fleets of auto-
mobiles and steam yachts of the rich will be placed
at the disposition of the workers' organizations. A
great drive will be made to demolish the present
collection of miserable shacks and tenements and
build homes fit for the workers to live in.

The Soviet government will immediately free the
poor farmers from the onerous burdens of mort-
gages and other debts which now hold them in
slavery. Of the total income of all farmers in

282 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

1927, 17% went for loans and mortgages.2 Land
rent will be abolished, both in the form of cash and
share-crops. The land will be to the users. The
present monopolistic prices for agricultural ma-
chinery, fertilizer, etc., will be drastically cut.
Taxes will be slashed and shifted off the backs of
the poor farmers. For the millions of "one-horse"
farmers now living at the verge of starvation in
many states, more land will be allotted; they will
also be furnished with the necessary seed, machin-
ery, fertilizer and expert instruction. Food and
other necessities of life will be given to those in
need. Production of foodstuffs will not be cur-
tailed, but greatly stimulated.

Such a program is not a matter of mere specula-
tion. This is the line that developed in the Soviet
Union and it is the one that will develop here.
Even in the face of their gigantic tasks, the neces-
sity to build industry from the ground up in the
teeth of world capitalist opposition, the Russians,
as we have seen in Chapter II, have been able
vastly to improve the conditions of the toilers of
factory and farm. In the United States, however,
the revolution, because of the superior industrial
equipment here, will be able to advance the Amer-
ican workers' standards of living much more
quickly and drastically. It will also make it pos-
sible to lend assistance to the more undeveloped
countries. It is true that the powerful and ruth-

2 Recent Economic Changes, Vol. II, p. 784.

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 283

less American capitalist class will seek to prevent
all this by destroying the industries during the
revolution, which only emphasizes the need for
breaking their resistance the sooner.

The above measures of improvement for the
workers and farmers will represent only a bare be-
ginning. Already the material conditions are at
hand in the United States for an enormous increase
in the well-being of the masses. The barriers to
this advancement are the incredible robberies,
wastes and the general idiocies of the capitalist
system. The revolution will clear away this mass
of exploitation, inefficiency and reaction, and will
open the road for such an industrial development
and general rise in material and cultural standards
of the masses as now seems only the stuff of
dreams.

The Liquidation of Capitalist Robbery and
Waste

THE REVOLUTION will put a stop to the whole series
of capitalist leaks, wastes and thieveries which now
prevent the rise in standards of the masses. It is
the marvel of the capitalist world how the Soviet
government, with virtually no foreign credits,
manages to raise the many billions necessary to
finance the Five- Year Plan. The explanation is
to be found in the gigantic economies inherent in
the Socialist system as against the inefficiencies and

284 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

grafts of capitalism. These economies will be
much greater in the United Soviet States of
America.

First of all, the American Soviet government,
by taking over the ownership of industry and the
land, will put a sudden stop to the manifold forms
of robbing the workers and farmers of monster
masses of value on the basis of private ownership
of the social means of livelihood. All forms of
capitalist interest, rent and profit will be abol-
ished. Capitalists, mortgage holders, landowners
and coupon clippers perform no useful function in
society. Their rake-off from industry and the
land is sheer robbery. This is one of the great les-
sons of the Russian revolution. They are a deadly
detriment. The first requirement for further
social progress is to abolish this class of parasites.
Veblen states the case very mildly when he says
that "the capitalist financier has come to be no
better than an idle wheel in the economic mecha-
nism, serving only to take up some of the lubri-
cant." 3 In reality, the capitalists, with their
program of mass poverty, exploitation and war, are
a menace to the human race.

Ending the gigantic robbery which is the very
base of the capitalist system will at once release
vast values for useful social ends. How vast may
be realized from the fact that in 1928 the total
national income in the United States was approxi-

s The Price System and the Engineers, P. 66.

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 285

mately 90 billion dollars, of which, it is estimated
by Varga that no less than 46% was taken by capi-
talist exploiters in the shape of corporation profits,
ground rents, interest on mortgages, official sala-
ries and bonuses, etc. An American Soviet gov-
ernment, stopping this monstrous expropriation of
the toilers, will turn these great sums to the im-
provement of the living and cultural standards of
the producing masses.

Secondly, the setting up of a Socialist system
will greatly increase the productive forces and pro-
duction itself. By liquidating the contradiction
between the modes of production and exchange, it
does away with economic crises, with all their waste
and loss. Where there is no capitalist class to de-
mand its profit before production and distribution
take place, and where the producers as a whole
receive the full product of their labor, there can
be no economic over-production and crisis. Con-
sequently, unemployment, with its terrible misery
and suffering, will become a thing of the past.
The many millions who now walk the streets un-
employed will have fruitful work to do, to the bene-
fit of all society. With the deadly limitations of
the capitalist market removed, the road will be
opened to virtually unlimited expansion of indus-
try and mass consumption.

Thirdly, Socialism will result in an enormous
increase in industrial and agricultural efficiency.
It is the proud boast of the capitalists, particu-

286 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

larly the Americans, that their system represents
the acme of economy and efficiency. But this is
so untrue as to be grotesque. The Socialist sys-
tem of planned production, based upon social
ownership of industry and the land, is incompara-
bly more efficient than the anarchic capitalist sys-
tem founded upon private property, competition
and the exploitation of the workers. In his book,
The Tragedy of Waste, Stuart Chase estimates
that of the 40,000,000 "gainfully employed" in the
United States about 20,500,000, or 50%, waste
their labor totally. Recently Iron Age stated that
by putting all the industrial plants in the United
States on the basis of modern technique it would
be possible to shorten the working day to one-third
of the present, while at the same time doubling
the output. Socialism will wipe out these great
wastes, inherent in the planless, competitive capital-
ist system. It will liquidate the hundreds of use-
less and parasitic occupations, such as wholesalers,
jobbers, and the entire crew of "middlemen," real
estate sharks, stock brokers, prohibition agents,
bootleggers, advertising specialists, traveling sales-
men, lawyers, whole rafts of government bureau-
crats, police, clericals, and sundry capitalist quacks,
fakers, and grafters. It will turn to useful social
purposes the immense values consumed by these
socially useless elements.

Socialism will also conserve the natural re-
sources of the country which are now being ruth-

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 287

lessly wasted in the mad capitalist race for profits.
Chase points out, among many examples of such
criminal waste, that by wrong production methods
16 billion barrels of petroleum have been lost;
every year 5 billion feet of lumber are likewise
wasted; and although as yet only 2% of the total
coal in this country has been mined, 33% of the
best beds has been gutted. Natural gas and the
various minerals are being similarly wasted. A
Soviet government will, of course, put a stop to
this criminal recklessness and have as one of its
principal aims the careful conservation of all the
natural resources.

Finally, the eventual victory of the workers on
a world scale will liquidate the monster, War, with
all its agonies and social losses. The ghastly bill
of the World War comprised, in terms of human
life, 12,990,000 dead and a total casualty list of
33,288,000, not counting the thirty millions more
who died in various countries from famine and
pestilence as a result of the war. The direct prop-
erty loss and general financial cost of the war is
estimated at 340 billion dollars.

It is along these broad channels that the Amer-
ican Soviet government will find the means for the
early and far-reaching improvement of the toilers'
standards. The abolition of the monumental rob-
bery of the workers by the capitalists in all its
myriad forms ; the liquidation of the capitalist eco-
nomic crisis, with its mass unemployment and

288 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

general crippling of the productive forces ; the de-
velopment of an industrial efficiency and a volume
of production now hardly dreamed of; the careful
conservation of natural resources; the abolition of
war ; — these revolutionary measures will provide
the material bases for a well-being of the toiling
masses of field and factory now quite unknown in
the world.

The Reorganization of Industry

AMONG the first tasks of the American Soviet
government will be the reorganization of the
chaotic capitalist industries upon Socialist lines.
To do this the banks will all be centralized in one
great system. The railroads will be completely
consolidated; duplicate lines will be eliminated;
bus, truck, airplane, interurban electric and steam-
ship lines will be scientifically coordinated with the
railroads, thereby making a saving of at least 50%
in transportation efficiency. The scattered units
of the other industries will be similarly organized,
with an eventual program of rebuilding industry
into larger units, regrouping of plants at more
strategic points, elimination of small and uneco-
nomic plants, etc.

The industrial system as a whole will be headed
by a body analogous to the Supreme Economic
Council of the U.S.S.R. The S.E.C. is made up
of a series of "united industries," "trusts," and

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 289

"combines." There is the necessary sub-division
for the special character of the industry, local con-
ditions, etc. Each industrial unit, with an estab-
lished budget and allocated capital and credit,
operates upon the principles of cost accountancy
and individual and collective responsibility. The
whole industrial apparatus — production, distri-
bution, financing — while each part retains the
necessary organization, specialization and initiative
required for the fulfillment for its particular func-
tions, constitutes a great industrial machine, each
cog of which fits into and works harmoniously with
the rest.

The superiority of such an organized Socialist
industry over the present piece-meal and anarchic
American industrial system is evident at a glance.
Compare this scientific industrial organization, as
a coordinated and cooperating whole, with the
present maze of 206,556 separate American manu-
facturing concerns, including coal mining 6,000;
textiles (cotton, wool, silk, rayon) 5,833; metal
(main branches) 23,000, etc.,4 not to speak of the
hundreds of thousands of separate retailing, job-
bing and financing concerns. And all these mul-
titudinous units are engaged in a dog-eat-dog
competition with each other, blindly producing and
throwing their products aimlessly into the markets.
Socialist industry means system, cooperation, effi-

* Figures based on U. S. Department of Commerce Census Bul-
letin, Dec. 31, 1930.

290 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

ciency; capitalist industry means chaos, conflict,
waste.

Naturally, American Socialist industry will be
operated upon the basis of a planned economy.
The aim of the whole industrial machine will be to
achieve the highest possible standards for the pro-
ducing masses, not the welfare of a few capital-
ists. Production will be scientifically calculated in
advance. The needs of the people and the possi-
bilities of the industries will be carefully studied
and met. With a thoroughly organized industrial
system the carrying out of the production plans
will be easy and natural. A Socialist society
without a planned economy is unthinkable, even as
it is unthinkable that a capitalist society should
work on the basis of scientific planning.

Under the American Soviet government with
such an organized industrial system, economic
crises, clogging of the markets through over-pro-
duction, cannot take place. The toilers as a whole
receiving the values they produce and there being
no parasitic capitalists whose special class interests
have to be preserved, gains in production will ex-
press themselves automatically and immediately in
higher wages, shorter working hours and generally
improved conditions. In a Soviet America there
could not possibly exist the present hideous anom-
aly of millions of workers and their families unem-
ployed and starving while the markets are glutted

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 291

with commodities and the great industries stand
idle.

The operation of Socialist nationalized industry
is, of course, not to be compared with government-
operated industry under capitalism. This is be-
cause the capitalists, fearing to endanger their
beloved system of private ownership, always see
to it that industries operated by their governments
are thoroughly sabotaged, mismanaged and gen-
erally discredited. But under Socialism the whole
interest of the government is to manage the indus-
tries efficiently and to eliminate bureaucratism,
and this is done to a degree quite unknown in the
capitalist world.

In Socialist society the trade unions play a fun-
damental role. They are a gigantic factor in the
Soviet Union. They draw the masses directly into
the work of Socialist construction, in the building
of the new society. They attend to the protection
of the immediate needs of the workers. They con-
stitute the mass basis for the Soviets. They are
the great schools for Communism. No important
activities are embarked upon without their consent
and cooperation. No labor law can go into effect
without their endorsement. Their representatives
occupy key positions in every stage of the eco-
nomic, political and social organization. Com-
pared to these great mass bodies, the American
Federation of Labor, which presumes to sneer at

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

the Russian unions, plays an insignificant role in
the life of the working class.

The Russian trade unions base their organiza-
tion directly upon the industries through shop com-
mittees. Their general structure follows the lines
of the economic organization of their industries.
There are 45 national industrial unions in the
U.S.S.R. They are not State organs, being based
entirely upon the principles of voluntary member-
ship.

The trade unions look after the formulation and
enforcement of the whole elaborate body of social
insurance (unemployment, sickness, old age, ma-
ternity, accident, etc.). They enforce the gov-
ernment sanitary and safety regulations. And
especially they work out the wage scales jointly
with the government economic organs. This is
not a matter for strikes and struggles, there being
no ruling, owning class to contend with; it is a
question of amicable arrangement upon the scien-
tific basis of the general returns from industry and
agriculture, taking into account the needs for the
further expansion of industry, the upkeep of the
government, etc.

In industry the trade unions perform a very
important part. But they do not of themselves
actually lead the production, this being the task
of the government economic organs, with close
local and national supervision from the Party and
the unions. The Syndicalist theory that the trade

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 293

unions could directly carry on production is one
of the many theories that were proven false by
the actual practice in the Russian revolution. The
unions, locally and nationally, hold periodic pro-
duction conferences with the technical heads of the
industries, hearing reports from them and checking
up on their work. They have representatives in
all the higher economic organs, as well as in the
Soviets proper. The trade unions are the very
basis of the vast mobilization of the working class
in the industries for the carrying through of the
Five- Year Plan.

The trade unions are also a vital means in the
education of the masses. They have a great net-
work of factory schools, newspapers, libraries
and theatres. They have thousands of rest homes,
clubs, sanatoria, hospitals, gymnasiums, etc. They
swell in many directions the great wave of en-
lightenment, organization and prosperity among
the toilers.

In building Socialism in this country the trade
unions will play essentially the same role as in the
U.S.S.R. The revolutionary unions of the Trade
Union Unity League are the nucleus of the even-
tual great labor organizations of Soviet America.
Whatever remnants of the present A.F. of L. may
exist at the time of the revolution will be merged
into the series of industrial unions based on all-
inclusive factory committees. The revolutionary
workers, both before and during the revolutionary

294 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

crisis, will ruthlessly drive from office the reac-
tionary A.F. of L. leaders as the most servile and
dangerous of all tools of the bourgeoisie.

The cooperatives are also a foundation stone in
the Socialist economic system. The cooperatives
form the great retail distributing mechanism; they
are directly connected with the factories, thus cut-
ting out all useless and parasitic middlemen. En-
tering into every city and village, they constitute
a gigantic distributing agency, beside which even
the biggest American chain stores and mail order
houses are only small potatoes. The cooperatives
also play a very important role in production, espe-
cially in agriculture. The tremendous collective
farm movement in the U.S.S.R. represents the co-
operative grown to revolutionary maturity.

As in the case of the American trade unions,
the existing cooperatives in this country will have
to be profoundly reorganized and rebuilt to per-
form their new tasks. They will be developed
from the skeleton organizations they are today into
a gigantic mass movement. This will be one of the
first and most urgent tasks of a revolutionary
American government.

In building Socialist industry the greatest prob-
lem the workers will have to solve, as the Russian
experience shows, is to secure mastery over indus-
trial technique. Although the great industrial
base will be on hand, despite capitalist efforts to
destroy it in the revolutionary struggle, there will

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 295

remain the task of giving the industries Socialist
form and leadership. It will be impossible to take
over, as is, the capitalist economic organs and per-
sonnel and start them off running as Socialist
institutions.

But in the United States this problem of devel-
oping the new Socialist forms and cadres will not
be so acute as in the Soviet Union. This is be-
cause of the general reasons previously cited: the
greater ripeness of the objective situation and the
existence of Soviet countries and a great body of
revolutionary experience. Inasmuch as American
industry is much more developed, the workers have
more skill and experience than the Russians had;
the trusts and the advanced industrial technique
will lend themselves more readily to Socialist re-
organization, and besides there will not be the need
for such swift industrial expansion as in the
U.S.S.R. Also the American capitalist engineers
do not form such an air-tight clique as the Russians
did and they will not be so strategically situated
to sabotage the industries; in the existing surplus
of technicians doubtless large numbers of them,
suffering from unemployment and generally bad
conditions, will go along with the revolution and
they will be given every opportunity to use their
skill in the industries. Besides, and this is of de-
cisive importance, the American Soviet govern-
ment will have at its disposal the vast experience

296 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

of the Russian workers in the building of Socialist
industry and also, if necessary, actual help from
their engineers.

The American Soviet government will immedi-
ately proceed with the difficult task of creating an
adequate supply of reliable technicians and mana-
gers for the industries. The scattered technical in-
stitutes, trade schools, correspondence schools, etc.,
will be organized, expanded and linked up directly
with the industries. Technical schools will be es-
tablished at all factories. Workers and their chil-
dren will be given the preference in the study of
industrial technique.

The Collectivization of Agriculture

THE SOVIET system provides a scientific method
of organizing agriculture as well as industry.
Stalin says: "To create an economic basis of So-
cialism— that means to unite agriculture with
Socialist industry into a single economy, and to
place agriculture under the leadership of Social-
ized industry." Private property, production for
profit, competition and all the rest of the capital-
ist chaos and robbery, have no more place on Soviet
farms than in the factories. An immediate and
fundamental problem to confront the American
Soviet government, therefore, will be to carry
through the Socialist collectivization of the land.

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 297

This, for the poor and middle farmers, will be done
upon a voluntary basis.

In the agrarian question the experience in the
Soviet Union is of the most fundamental impor-
tance. In their vast movement of collectivization,
described in Chapter II, the Russians have devel-
oped several forms of farm organization. Chief
among these are the "kolkoz," or artel, with land,
draft animals and implements pooled and the joint
returns distributed upon the basis of the work done,
and the State farm, ("sovkhoz"), with the land
farmed directly by the State, (State Farm Trust),
and the workers paid upon a wage basis. There
are also the societies for the joint cultivation of
the land (TSOS), with private property in draft
animals, crops, etc., and finally, there are the com-
munes, with common property in tools, horses,
products and dwellings. In all cases the land is
owned by the government. The State agriculture
organization is grouped under the Commissariat of
Agriculture, and is formed into trusts for various
crops and geographical divisions of the industry;
such as Grain Trust, Cotton Trust, Flax Trust,
Livestock Trust, Hemp Trust, Tea Trust, etc.
Crops are sold either directly to the government,
to the cooperatives, or, in a very rapidly lessening
extent, upon the open local markets.

All these forms have been widely applied. But
the most adaptable and basic are the artels and
the State farms. The State farms are an unqoies-

298 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

tioned success, but it is especially along the lines
of the artel that the many millions of Russian peas-
ants are now regrouping themselves. The collec-
tives and State farms, despite the still existing
shortage of machinery, etc., have already proved,
by greatly increased output, their vast advance
over the old forms of farming.

The superiority of such an organized agriculture
over the present unorganized American system is
evident at a glance. It is like comparing a mod-
ern automobile with an ox cart. The Russian
farmers, with their vast farms, are producing crops
under increasingly scientific conditions and then
disposing of them to a government which they, to-
gether with the industrial workers, completely
control. American farmers, on the other hand, in
6,300,000 separate units destitute of organization
except for a few cooperatives and other associa-
tions largely controlled by the bankers, capitalist
politicians and rich farmers, are all producing,
helter-skelter, and then, harassed by capitalist loan
sharks, industrial trusts, and a hostile government,
are selling their crops in open competition with
each other and the whole world. It is no surprise,
therefore, that while the Russian farmers are blaz-
ing ahead to progress and prosperity, the Amer-
ican farmers slump deeper into poverty, stagnation
and crisis.

The central policy of the American Soviet gov-
ernment in agriculture will be to reorganize the

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 299

farming system primarily upon the basis of State
farms. The position of American agricultural
technique and the experience in the U.S.S.R. will
justify such a policy. The great ranches of the
Far West, the big corporation farms of the Middle
West, the huge private estates of the millionaires
in the East — all confiscated by the new govern-
ment— will provide immediate bases for many
such great State farms. These will be vast model
farms, equipped with the most modern machinery
and technique. They will raise the level of agri-
culture production generally to a new and higher
stage. But, doubtless, the artel type of collective
farm will also be widely organized. It will be the
policy of the government to stimulate the collec-
tivization movement, furnishing the poor farmers
with the necessary implements, etc. The artel
form of farm will provide a convenient bridge,
leading away from individualist, competitive farm-
ing and towards the State farm.

Once the political power is in the hands of the
workers and peasants the collectivization of Amer-
ican agriculture, the winning of the poorer cate-
gories of farmers for the building of Socialism, will
proceed very rapidly. It is true that the American
farmer on the average has a bigger farm than the
Russian peasant had and that the private property
idea is perhaps more deeply ingrained in him, but
he is, as we have already seen, caught between the
millstones of capitalist exploitation and is being

300 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

crushed. The vast majority of the farmers will
have everything to gain from the outset by a So-
cialized agriculture. Today, despite popular
notions to the contrary, the average farmer seri-
ously lacks machinery. The one million American
tractors, not to speak of other costly machines,
are now concentrated very largely in the hands of
the well-to-do and rich farmers. The poor farmer
also lacks fertilizers and has little or no chance to
apply modern methods.

Collectivization under a Soviet system will radi-
cally change all this. Not only will it furnish the
farmer with a boundless market for his products,
but it will also provide him with machinery, fer-
tilizers, selected seed and general scientific meth-
ods on a scale entirely unknown even on the
largest present-day American farms. The mar-
ginal mountain and rocky farms in the South, New
England, etc., will be abandoned and the farming
industry concentrated and intensified in the most
adaptable sections. The revolutionary collecti-
vization of the land will effect a profound advance
in American agriculture and cause a veritable leap
forward in the living standards of the farmer.

The Liberation of the Negro

THE CAPITALIST class not only robs the workers
as a whole, but it visits special exploitation upon
those sections of the working class — Negroes,

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 301

foreign-born, women, youth, the aged, etc. — who,
for one reason or another, are the least able to de-
fend themselves in the class struggle. The Amer-
ican Soviet government will drastically eliminate
such special discrimination, along with capitalist
exploitation generally.

Above all, as we have remarked, it is the Negro
who is singled out for the bitterest exploitation
and persecution by the capitalists. His condition
is comparable only to that of the "untouchables"
of India and is the most crying outrage of Amer-
ican capitalism. He is set apart as a pariah, an
object of contempt and scorn, a victim of the most
systematic suppression and enslavement to be
found anywhere in the modern industrial world.

The purpose of all this tyranny and repression
is, of course, the most intense robbery of the Negro
toilers; for the vast majority of Negroes are either
poor farmers or workers. The Jim-Crow system,
with all its cultivated snobbery of race, is a device
of the ruling classes to whip extra profits out of
the hides of the oppressed Negroes by splitting
them off from the rest of the toilers.

The Republican party, boasted friend of the
Negro, is equally responsible with the Democratic
party for the maintenance of this criminal outrage.
Such Negro organizations as the Urban League
and the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, dominated by the white and
Negro capitalists and petty bourgeoisie, also have

302 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

this responsibility; they live by cultivating segrega-
tionalism; they sabotage every real fight for the
liberation of the Negro. In the case of the f ramed-
up nine Scottsboro Negro boys, the attorney of
the N.A.A.C.P. made a purely formal defense,
practically coinciding with the prosecution.

As for the American Federation of Labor, its
record on the Negro question is one of shame and
treachery; it falls into step with the whole capitalist
policy by barring Negroes from its unions, by
blocking their entry into the better-paid jobs, by
refusing to fight for their burning demands, by cul-
tivating the insidious white chauvinism. The
measure of the policy of the A.F. of L. on the
Negro question is to be seen, for example, in At-
lanta, where Negroes are not even allowed to en-
ter the local labor temple.

The Socialist party, despite all its parade of radi-
calism and alleged friendship of the Negro, follows
the same basic Jim-Crow line as the A.F. of L.
This was clearly shown by Heywood Broun, So-
cialist leader, when he said:

"If I were a candidate for high executive office, or
judiciary office, I would say, even without being cornered,
that I would not now sanction the efforts to enforce the
14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the
United States." 5

The Communist party, alone of all the political
parties, fights for the liberation of the Negro, both

5 New York Telegram, Apr. 28, 1930.

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 303

in the present-day struggle and as an ultimate goal.
The American Soviet government, immediately it
takes power, will deal a shattering blow to the
whole monstrous Jim-Crowism. To destroy it
ruthlessly will be one of the real joys of the vic-
torious proletarian revolution. Every remnant of
slavery will be abolished. In a Soviet system, the
Negro will have the most complete equality — eco-
nomically, politically, socially. The doors to every
occupation, to every social activity, will be wide
open for him. He will have ample land, confis-
cated from the great white landlords. He will be
free to do and go as any other citizen, without let
or hindrance. Attempts to maintain the capitalist
white chauvinism and ostracism of the Negroes
will be punished as a serious crime against society.
Socialism will mean the first real freedom for the
Negro. He is beginning to realize this, hence his
mass turning to the Communist party for leader-
ship, and the consequent deep alarm of the capital-
ists and big landowners at this growing unity of
white and black toilers.

The status of the American Negro is that of an
oppressed national minority, and only a Soviet sys-
tem can solve the question of such minorities.
This it does, in addition to setting up real equality
in the general political and social life, by establish-
ing the right of self-determination for national
minorities in those parts of the country where they
constitute the bulk of the population. The con-

304 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

stitution of the Soviet Union provides that, "Each
united republic retains the right of free withdrawal
from the Union." The Program of the Com-
munist International declares for:

"The recognition of the right of all nations, irrespec-
tive of race, to complete self-determination, that is,
self-determination inclusive of the right to State separa-
tion."

Accordingly, the right of self-determination will
apply to Negroes in the American Soviet system.
In the so-called Black Belt of the South, where the
Negroes are in the majority, they will have the
fullest right to govern themselves and also such
white minorities as may live in this section. The
same principle will apply to all the colonial and
semi-colonial peoples now dominated by American
imperialism in Cuba, the Philippines, Central and
South America, etc.

And logically, foreign-born workers, now denied
the right to vote and ruthlessly deported, will enjoy
the fullest rights of citizenship. One of the most
monstrous features of the present attack upon the
working class is the deportation of tens of thou-
sands of foreign-born workers by Doak's Depart-
ment of Labor. These masses of workers, torn
away from home and families, are sent back to
countries with which they have lost all touch.
Doak's deportation campaign, part of the capital-
ist offensive, is an attempt to terrorize the

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 305

foreign-born workers, to crush every semblance of
resistance among them, to split them off from the
American-born workers. The wholesale deporta-
tion of radical workers and leaders is an attempt
to illegalize the Communist party and the TUUL.

The experience with self-determination of na-
tional minorities in the Soviet Union shows that the
Russians have solved this problem with the revolu-
tion. The many national minorities have the right
of self-determination; they have their own lan-
guages, their own culture. Yet they all live to-
gether in the strongest unity under the general
constitution of the U.S.S.R. Where there is no
capitalist or feudal exploitation there can be no
suppression of weaker nationalities. The radical
liquidation of the "insoluble" Jewish problem in
the U.S.S.R. testifies to the completeness of the
Bolshevik cure. Murderous pogroms, a curse of
old Russia, are now totally eradicated. The Jews
enjoy absolute equality with all other nationalities.
The solution of the question of suppressed nation-
alities, a question which causes untold misery in
the capitalist world, is one of the greatest achieve-
ments of the Russian revolution.

The American Soviet will, of course, abolish all
restrictions upon racial intermarriage. The argu-
ments of Ku Klux Klanners and the like that
Negroes are an inferior race and that "mongrel"
peoples are less capable, have no justification in
science and social experience. Those "scientists"

306 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

who endorse such "white supremacy" theories are
only so many bought-and-paid-f or upholders of the
prevailing mode of exploitation. The facts are
that all the big peoples of today are already hope-
lessly "mongrel" and that wherever Negroes have
half a chance they demonstrate their intellectual
equality with the whites. Geographic isolation of
the early human stock into widely separated groups
brought about its differentiation into individual
races ; contact between these various races, bred of
modern industrialization, is just as irresistibly
breaking down these racial differences and bring-
ing about racial amalgamation. The revolution
will only hasten this process of integration, already
proceeding throughout the world with increasing
tempo.

The Emancipation of Woman

WHEN woman emerged historically from feudal-
ism she was burdened with a whole series of cus-
toms, prejudices and restrictions enslaving her in
her work, her personal life and her political status.
Characteristically capitalism, which respects noth-
ing in its greed for profits, quickly seized upon all
these handicaps of woman and used them to doubly
exploit her. This is true of the United States as
well as other capitalist countries. The so-called
freedom of the American woman is a myth.
Either she is a gilded butterfly bourgeois parasite
or she is an oppressed slave.

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 307

The life of the working class woman and poor
farmer's wife is one of drudgery and exploitation.
Capitalism sees in her mainly a breeder of wage
slaves and soldiers. The boasted American home,
enslaving the woman through her economic in-
feriority and her children, makes her dependent
upon her husband. On all sides she confronts
medieval sex taboos, assiduously cultivated by the
church, State and bourgeois moralists. When she
goes into industry she has to toil for from a third
to a half less than the male worker; she works at
a killing pace under unhealthful conditions and she
is barred from many occupations under the hypo-
critical and reactionary slogan, "The woman's
place is in the home"; the A.F. of L. betrays her
every attempt to organize and to defend her inter-
ests. Politically, she is practically a zero, having
little or no opportunity to educate herself or to
function in an organized manner. Finally, to cap
the climax of woman's enslavement, capitalism
maintains in full blast the "oldest profession,"
prostitution.

The proletarian revolution will profoundly
change all this. The American Soviet government
will immediately set about liquidating the elaborate
network of slavery in which woman is enmeshed.
She will be freed economically, politically and so-
cially. The U.S.S.R. shows the general lines
along which the emancipation of woman will also
proceed in a Soviet America.

308 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

The Russian woman is free economically, and
this is the foundation of all her freedom. Every
field of activity is open to her. She is to be found
even in such occupations as locomotive engineer,
electrical crane operator, machinist, factory di-
rector, etc. There are women generals in the Red
Army, women ambassadors, etc. Two-thirds of
the medical students are women. In industry the
women are thoroughly organized in the trade
unions. They get the same pay as men, and are
protected by an elaborate system of maternity and
other social insurance. In politics the women of
the Soviet Union are a major and militant factor.

The Russian woman is also free in her sex life.
When married life becomes unwelcome for a couple
they are not barbarously compelled to live together.
Divorce is to be had for the asking by one or both
parties. The woman's children are recognized as
legitimate by the State and society, whether born
in official wedlock or not. The free American
woman, like her Russian sister, will eventually
scorn the whole fabric of bourgeois sex hypocrisy
and prudery.

In freeing the woman, Socialism liquidates the
drudgery of housework. So important do Com-
munists consider this question that the Communist
International deals with it in its world program.
In the Soviet Union the attack upon housework
slavery is delivered from every possible angle.
Great factory kitchens are being set up to prepare

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 309

hot, well-balanced meals for home consumption by
the millions; communal kitchens in apartment
houses are organized widespread. Every device
to simplify and reduce housework is spread among
the masses with all possible dispatch.

To free the woman from the enslavement of the
perpetual care of her children is also a major ob-
ject of Socialism. To this end in the Soviet
Union there is being developed the most elaborate
system of kindergartens and playgrounds in the
world — in the cities and villages, in the neighbor-
hoods and around the factories. Of this develop-
ment, Anna Razamova says:

"All these institutions for child welfare mean a great
deal in the life of the working woman. They free her from
the necessity of spending all her time at home, cleaning,
cooking and mending. While she is at work she can be
sure that her child is being well taken care of, and that it
is supervized by trained nurses and teachers, and gets
wholesome food at regular hours."

The free Russian woman is the trail blazer for
the toiling women of the world. She is beating out
a path which, ere long, her American sister will
begin to follow.

Unshackling the Youth

A RULING class which did not hesitate to send more
than twelve million young men to their death in

6 Russian Women in the Building of Socialism, p. 13.

310 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

the World War to further its greed for wealth and
power, naturally does not stick at the most ruth-
less exploitation of the youth at all other times.
Capitalism, whose great god is profit, poisons so-
ciety at its source ; it destroys the seed corn of the
human race, the young.

The condition of the children of the American
working class is a damning indictment of capital-
ism. Recently even President Hoover admitted
that in the United States, the richest country in
the world, 6,000,000 children are chronically under-
nourished. The starved masses of workers, har-
assed by low wages and unemployment, are unable
to feed their children properly, and the State cal-
lously shrugs its shoulders at the problem. Great
masses of them slave in the industries, while their
parents go around jobless. The position of the
workers' children has naturally grown immeasur-
ably worse during the present industrial crisis.
The Nation, (Mar. 23, 1932), exposes a typical
condition when it declares: "5,000 to 10,000 chil-
dren in Detroit are daily in child bread lines."
Regarding a recent investigation of conditions
among continuation school boys in New York,
Grace Hutchens states:

"Of 2,700 working boys, less than one in seven was
found free from physical defects. One-fifth of them
were under-weight from under-nourishment. Three-fifths
needed dental care. Defective eyesight, adenoids, unde-
veloped chest, poor muscle tone, diseased tonsils, anemia,

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 311

heart conditions, and tuberculosis scars were common.
Most of these difficulties could have been prevented."

The Labour Research Association says in its
Bulletin of Nov. 9, 1931 :

"In Detroit, in a single school in the working class dis-
trict, 500 children refused to report for classes. Investi-
gation showed that more than half of them lacked even
clothes and shoes. In Chicago, children are fainting
from lack of food and 15,000 are starving. In Cleveland,
the number of under-nourished children in the elementary
schools will reach 15,000 before the end of the present
term. A recent study of 290 typical children in West
Virginia coal towns by Dr. Ruth Fox of the Fifth Avenue
Hospital in New York City, showed that in Ward, W. Va.,
their average weight was 12% below the standard."

The generally disastrous effects of such condi-
tions may be better imagined than described.
Capitalism, besides thus feeding, vampire-like upon
children, no less ruthlessly exploits the youth, who
are becoming an ever-greater factor in industry.
It drives their immature bodies at a pace in pro-
duction which even adult workers cannot endure;
it forces them to work at lower wages than grown-
ups; child labor laws are "more honored in the
breach than in the observance." Special victims in
this raw exploitation are the Negro youth.

Such barbarous conditions for the youth are, of
course, utterly alien to Socialism. Just as in-
evitably as a profit-seeking, anarchic, socially-

7 Youth in Industry, p. 14.

812 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

Irresponsible capitalism ruins the young of the
people, so inevitably, does an ordered and respon-
sible Socialism take the greatest care of its youth.
In the very center of the whole Communist
program stands the systematic protection and de-
velopment of the children and young workers.
Even the sharpest enemies of the Soviet Union
have to admit the truth of this. Not even in the
darkest days of the civil war, when hunger and
pestilence were rampant, was the welfare of the
youth ever lost sight of in the U.S.S.R. They
always had plenty, although often their parents
were semi-starved. A bourgeois correspondent,
Julia Blanshard, says:

"Youth is one of the first concerns of Soviet Russia.
You, as an elder, might live on cabbage soup, but your
children would have meat stews and even sweets. Russia
looks to the future, not the past. . . The children look
clean, well-nourished, neatly dressed and alert."

Under Socialism the care of the children rests
directly with the parents — stories of the national-
ization of children in the Soviet Union are ri-
diculous. But the State does not let matters rest
entirely with the parents. It throws such additional
safeguards around the children in the schools, kin-
dergartens, etc., of city and village that none can
possibly go hungry, be denied medical care or lack
education.

s New York Telegram, Nov. 8, 1931.

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 313

The Soviet government, the trade unions and
the Communist Youth League, as well as the Party
and other organizations, vigilantly protect the
youth employed in Russian industry. The gen-
eral conditions they have set up indicate the lines
of development in the United States. There is no
industrial child labor. And such driving as exists
among the millions of young workers in American
industries is unheard of. The Russian young
workers work only six hours daily; they are
shielded from night work and especially danger-
ous or heavy toil. The Soviet Union is the only
country in the world where the youth are paid
equal wage rates with adults for similar work.
The health and education of the young workers is
promoted by vast sport and cultural organizations.
In politics the youth are a real factor, the fran-
chise being based upon the principle, "Old enough
to work, old enough to vote." In every walk in
life the antiquated prejudices that the "elders"
alone must lead have been broken down and the
path is clear for the development of full leadership
on the basis of ability and regardless of age. In
the United States, as in the U.S.S.R., the Soviet
system will open up a new world for the youth.

The Cultural Revolution in the United States

PRESENT-DAY culture in this country is an instru-
ment by which the capitalist class consolidates its

314 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

dominant position. The prevailing systems of
education, morality, ethics, science, art, patriotism,
religion, etc., are as definitely parts of capitalist
exploitation as the stock exchange. The schools,
churches, newspapers, motion pictures, radio, thea-
tres and various other avenues of publicity and
mass instruction are the organized propaganda ma-
chinery of the ruling class.

The chief aims of bourgeois culture, so far as it
is directed towards the working class, are to de-
velop the workers into, (1) slave-like robots who
will accept uncomplainingly whatever standards of
life and work the owners of industry see fit to
grant them; (2) unthinking soldiers who will en-
thusiastically get themselves killed off in defense
of their masters' rulership; (3) superstitious dolts
who will satisfy themselves with a promise of para-
dise after death as a substitute for a decent life
here on earth. To these ends the workers are regi-
mented in the schools, poisoned by the militaristic
Boy Scouts and C.M.T.C., enmeshed in fascist-like
sport organizations, herded into the strike-break-
ing Y.M.C.A., stuffed with endless rot in the news-
papers and movies, jammed into religious training
before they are able to think for themselves, etc.
As for real education, about all the workers get of
it in school is the minimum of the three R's re-
quired to enable them to perform the tasks allotted
them in industry.

So far as this culture is directed to the bourgeoisie

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 315

and petty bourgeoisie, it results in a mass produc-
tion of capitalist intellectual robots. The schools
and colleges, firmly in the grip of finance capital,
as Upton Sinclair so completely showed in his
book, The Goose Step, are great manufacto-
ries of Babbitts. In no country is culture so de-
based by capitalism as in the United States.
Essentially a gigantic effort to perpetuate the
robbery of the workers, it is sterile, hypocritical,
colorless, lifeless. America's capitalistic writers
are engaged in trying to convince the working class
what a glorious thing it is to be a wage slave; her
artists and poets are busy glorifying Heinz's
pickles and the advertising pages of The Saturday
Evening Post; her dramatists and musicians are
cooking up patriotic slush and idiotic sex stories
to divert the masses from their troubles and the
hopeless boredom of capitalist life; her scientists
are trying to prove the unity of science and re-
ligion, etc., etc.

The proletarian revolution in the United States
will at once make a devastating slash into this maze
of hypocrisy and intellectual rubbish. Not less
than in the Soviet Union, it will usher in a pro-
found cultural revolution. For the first time in
history the toiling masses will have the opportunity
to know and enjoy the good things of life. With
prosperity assured for all, with no slave class to
stultify intellectually and with no system of ex-
ploitation to defend, Communist culture will have

316 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

a mass base and will flourish luxuriantly and free.
It will call forth the artistic and intellectual powers
of the masses, always hitherto repressed by chattel
slavery, feudalism and capitalism. Superstition,
and ignorance will vanish in a realm of science;
"Culture will become the acquirement of all and
the class ideologies of the past will give place to
scientific materialist philosophy." 9

Among the elementary measures the American
Soviet government will adopt to further the cul-
tural revolution are the following; the schools, col-
leges and universities will be coordinated and
grouped under the National Department of Edu-
cation and its state and local branches. The
studies will be revolutionized, being cleansed of
religious, patriotic and other features of the bour-
geois ideology. The students will be taught on
the basis of Marxian dialectical materialism, inter-
nationalism and the general ethics of the new So-
cialist society. Present obsolete methods of
teaching will be superseded by a scientific
pedagogy.

The churches will remain free to continue their
services, but their special tax and other privileges
will be liquidated. Their buildings will revert to
the State. Religious schools will be abolished and
organized religious training for minors prohibited.
Freedom will be established for anti-religious prop-
aganda.

9 Program of the Communist International.

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 317

The whole basis and organization of capitalist
science will be revolutionized. Science will be-
come materialistic, hence truly scientific; God will
be banished from the laboratories as well as from
the schools. Science will be thoroughly organized
and will work according to plan; instead of the
present individualistic hit-or-miss scientific dab-
bling, there will be a great organization of science,
backed by the full power of the government. This
organization will make concerted attacks upon the
central problems, concrete and abstract, that con-
front science.

The press, the motion picture, the radio, the
theatre, will be taken over by the government.
They will be cleansed of their present trash of sex,
crime, sensationalism and general babbitry, and
developed into institutions of real education and
art; into purveyors of the interesting, dramatic,
and amusing in life. The press will, through
workers' correspondents on the Russian lines, be-
come the actual voice of the people, not simply the
forum of professional writers.

The American Soviet government will, of course,
give the greatest possible stimulus to art in every
form, seeking to cultivate the latent powers of the
masses. Painting, sculpture, literature, music —
every form of artistic expression — will flourish as
never before. The great art treasures of the rich
will be confiscated and assembled in museums for
the enjoyment and instruction of the toiling masses.

818 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

Cultural societies of all kinds will be developed
energetically.

One of the basic concerns of the workers' gov-
ernment will be, naturally, the conservation of the
health of the masses. To this end a national De-
partment of Health will be set up, with the neces-
sary local and State sub-divisions. A free medical
service, based upon the most scientific principles,
will be established. The people will be taught how
to live correctly. They will be given mass instruc-
tion in diet, physical culture, etc. A last end will
be put to capitalist medical quackery and the adul-
teration of food.

A main task of the American Soviet government
will be to make the cities liveable. This will involve
not only the wholesale destruction of the shacks
that millions of workers now call homes, but the
building over of the congested capitalist cities into
roomy Socialist towns. These will develop towards
the decentralization of industry and population, the
breaking down of the differences between city and
country. There will be no great landed, financial,
and transportation interests to maintain the mon-
strous congestion typical of capitalist cities. The
present "city beautiful" plans of capitalism will
seem puny and trivial to the future city builders of
Socialism.

Only a few years ago many of the foregoing
proposals would have seemed fantastic, merely
Utopian dreams. But now we can see them grow-

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 319

ing into actuality in the Soviet Union. In making
the cultural revolution in the United States, the
workers and farmers, facing the same general prob-
lems as the Russians, will solve them along similar
lines.

Curing Crime and Criminals

CAPITALISM, by its very nature, is a prolific breeder
of crime. It is a system of legalized robbery of
the working class. The whole process of capitalist
business is a swindle and an armed hold-up. In
capitalist society what constitutes crime and what
does not is a purely arbitrary distinction. The
capitalists do not recognize any line of demarca-
tion for themselves. They do whatever they can
"get away with." The record of every large for-
tune and big corporation in this country is smeared
not only with brutal robbery of the workers but
also statutory crime of every description, from the
bribery of legislatures to plain murder. Wall
Street is full of uncaught Kreugers.

In a society where each grabs what he can at the
expense of the rest, naturally the government of-
fers a wide field of corruption. It is a well-known
fact, emphasized afresh by the Seabury investiga-
tion in New York, that every city and State in this
country is controlled by grafting politicians, allied
with the criminal underworld. The Teapot Dome
scandal, not to mention numerous others, shows
that the national government is also permeated with

320 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

this gross corruption. Such corruption is not a
special condition, but of the very tissue of capi-
talism.

It is not surprising that in a system of society
where the aim is to get rich by any means, crime of
every kind should flourish. Faced by low wages
and other impossible economic conditions on
the one hand and by the corrupt example of capi-
talism generally on the other, many naturally take
to lives of open crime and try to seize at the point
of a gun what the capitalist "big shots" steal
through exploiting the workers, by a corner on the
stock exchange, or by corrupting the government.
The main difference between their operations is
primarily one of dimension. Al Capone is an al-
together legitimate child of American capitalism,
and it is no accident that he is an object of such
widespread admiration.

The American Soviet government will liquidate
the mounting crime wave which, according to the
Wickersham committee, costs the government a
billion dollars yearly. Socialism, by putting an
end to capitalist exploitation, deals a mortal blow
at crime of every description. The economic base
of crime is destroyed. The worker is enabled to
live and work under the best possible conditions.
There is no place for human sharks to prey upon
their fellow men. Not only does the abolition of
capitalism destroy the basis of the so-called crimes
against property, but the revolutionized economic

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA

and social conditions, involving an intelligent moral
code and effective educational system, also greatly
diminish the "crimes of passion."

These facts are already demonstrated in the
Soviet Union, which is fast becoming a crimeless
country. While the exigencies of the revolutionary
struggle against the counter-revolution made it
necessary, from time to time, to confine a consid-
erable number of political prisoners, this need is
now fast passing with the consolidation of the So-
cialist regime and the liquidation of the last rem-
nants of the exploiting classes in the Soviet Union.
Life and property are safer now in the U.S.S.R.
than in any other country in the world. Crime is
rapidly sinking into abeyance and this will be more
and more the case as the new society becomes
strengthened.

Capitalism blames crime upon the individual, in-
stead of upon the bad social conditions which
produce it. Hence its treatment of crime is es-
sentially one of punishment. But the failure of
its prisons, with their terrible sex-starvation, graft,
over-crowding, idleness, stupid discipline, fero-
ciously long sentences and general brutality, is
overwhelmingly demonstrated by the rapidly
mounting numbers of prisoners and the long list
of terrible prison riots. Capitalist prisons are
actually schools of crime. Even the standpat
Wickersham committee had to condemn the atro-

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

cious American prison system as brutal, medieval
and fruitless.

Socialist criminology, on the other hand, attacks
the bad social conditions. While the American
Soviet government will ruthlessly break up the
underworld gangs that brazenly infest all American
cities and will also give short shrift to grafting
politicians, its prison system will be essentially
educational in character. In the new Russian
prisons, for example, the prisoners have the right
to marry and to live with their families; they are
taught useful trades and are paid full union wages
for their work; there are no guards or walls or
bars; the discipline is organized entirely by the
prisoners themselves. The prisoners are also al-
lowed freely to visit their friends in other towns.
The lengths of the terms to be served are deter-
mined by the prisoners' committees, on the basis
of the fitness of the given prisoners to resume their
places in society. The whole terminology of crime,
criminal, prison, etc., has been abandoned in such
institutions. Upon release, a prisoner is not only
able to make his way in society but is welcomed.
He is eligible to belong to the Communist party.
It requires very little imagination to see the great
advantages of this Socialist system over the bar-
barous prisons of capitalist countries. Congress-
man W. I. Sirovich, (Dem., N. Y.), said, after a
recent visit to the Soviet Union, "The Russian

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 323

prison system sets an example that is worthy of
emulation by any nation in the world." 10

Prohibition, based upon a criminal alliance be-
tween capitalists, crooked politicians and gang-
sters, has bred a growth of criminals such as the
world has never seen before. And the "best
minds" of the country stand powerless before the
problem. The American Soviet government will
deal with this question by eliminating prohibition,
by establishing government control of the manu-
facture and sale of alcoholic liquors; these meas-
ures to be supported by an energetic campaign
among the masses against excessive drinking.

This way of handling the prohibition question is
working successfully in the Soviet Union. Shortly
after the October revolution the Soviet government
prohibited the sale or manufacture of alcoholic
drinks. But soon bootlegging began, with familiar
demoralizing consequences: poisonous liquor was
made, much badly-needed grain was wasted, open
violation of the law existed on all sides. Then,
with characteristic vigor and clarity of purpose,
the government legalized the making and selling
of intoxicating beverages. At the same time, a big
campaign was initiated by the government, the
Party, the trade unions, etc., to educate the work-
ers against alcoholism. This program is succeed-
ing; the evils of alcoholism are definitely on the
decline. Doubtless, the Russians have found the

10 New York Journal, Dec. 1, 1931.

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

real solution of the liquor question. Just as So-
cialism is abolishing so many other evils, it is also
rapidly wiping out alcoholism and the mass of
misery and degradation that accompanies it.

The Abolition of War

ONE OF the revolutionary achievements of victori-
ous world Communism will be the ending of war.
In Chapter I we have seen the great and growing
danger of a new world war and also the utter
futility of all the capitalist peace pacts and dis-
armament schemes as war preventives. We have
also seen the economic forces of imperialism be-
hind the war danger. So long as capitalism lasts
war must continue to curse the human race. It is
the historical task of the proletariat to put an end
to this hoary monster. This it will do by destroy-
ing the capitalist system and with it the economic
causes that bring about war.

It is characteristic of capitalism to justify all
the robbery and misery and terrors of its system
by seeking to create the impression that they are
caused by basic traits in human nature, or even
by "acts of god." Thus we find current many
metaphysical and mysterious explanations of the
present crisis and unemployment. These pre-
ventable disasters are made to appear almost as
natural phenomena over which mankind has no
control, like tornadoes and earthquakes. The

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 325

same general attitude is taken with regard to war.
War is put forth as arising out of the very nature
of humanity. Man is pictured as a war-like ani-
mal, and therefore capitalism escapes responsi-
bility. War becomes more or less inevitable.

This is all nonsense, of course. Man is by na-
ture a gregarious and friendly animal. He does
not make war because he dislikes others of his own
species, differing from him in language, religion,
geographical location, etc. His wars have always
arisen out of struggles over the very material things
of wealth and power. This is true, whether he has
been living in a tribal, slave, feudal or capitalist
economy, and whether he has obscured the true
cause of his wars with an intense religious garb or
with slogans about making the world safe for
democracy. The cause of modern war is, as we
have already seen, the imperialistic policies of the
capitalist nations to rob the colonial peoples, to
smash back the growing revolutionary movement,
to crush each other in the world struggle for mar-
kets, raw materials and territory. In a society
in which there is no private property in industry
and land, in which no exploitation of the workers
takes place and where plenty is produced for all,
there can be no grounds for war. The interests
of a Socialist society are fundamentally opposed
to the murderous and unnatural struggle of inter-
national war.

Under capitalism the workers, by militant and

326 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

well- organized struggle, can check the develop-
ment of war. By the threat of revolution they can,
for a time, force the capitalists to hold in leash
their dogs of war. This fear has contributed basi-
cally to holding the capitalist governments so long
from making another open armed attack upon the
Soviet Union. But pressure from the workers can
only delay the war, not stop it permanently. The
irresistible and incurable antagonisms of the capi-
talist countries inevitably force them into war,
revolution or no revolution. Only the proletarian
revolution itself can solve these war-breeding con-
tradictions and put a final end to war. Not Chris-
tianity but Communism will bring peace on earth.

A Communist world will be a unified, organized
world. The economic system will be one great
organization, based upon the principle of planning
now dawning in the U.S.S.R. The American
Soviet government will be an important section in
this world organization. In such a society there
will be no tariffs or the many other barriers erected
by capitalism against a free world interchange of
goods. The raw material supplies of the world will
be at the disposition of the peoples of the world.

Politically, the world will be organized. There
will be no colonies, no "spheres of influence," no
hypocritical "open doors." The toilers will then
have fully realized Marx's famous slogan, "Work-
ingmen of the World, Unite!" The interests of
the toiling masses in the various countries will not

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 327

be in conflict, but in harmony with each other.
Those who speak of "red imperialism" repeat the
calumnies of capitalism. Once the power of the
bourgeoisie is broken internationally and its States
destroyed, the world Soviet Union will develop
towards a scientific administration of things, as
Engels describes. There will be no place for the
present narrow patriotism, the bigoted nationalist
chauvinism that serves so well the capitalist war-
makers. Armies and navies, rendered obsolete,
will be disbanded. Grim war will meet its
Waterloo.

At the meeting of the League of Nations' Pre-
paratory Commission for Disarmament at Geneva
in November, 1927, the representatives of the
Soviet Union presented a proposal for complete
world disarmament. It was later re-enforced by
the Soviet Union's proposal for a general economic
non-aggression pact, by its non-aggression treaties
with individual governments, and by its generally
firm peace policy in the face of imperialist provo-
cation.

But, of course, the imperialist capitalist nations
did not accept the Soviet Union's plan for doing
away with war. The U.S.S.R. is the only country
that genuinely struggles for peace; the capitalist
powers need war in their business. War is not to
be ended in capitalist peace conferences, but by
revolutionary struggle of the toiling masses against
capitalism itself. Hence, inevitably, the capital-

328 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

ists at Geneva ridiculed the Soviet 1927 proposals
and shortly afterwards adopted as a substitute the
supremely hypocritical Kellogg Peace Pact, mean-
while intensifying their own war preparations.
They have again rejected the Soviet Union's dis-
armament proposal at the present Geneva con-
ference. Thereby they expose afresh to the
workers of the world the fact that they do not want
peace, but war. It will be only when the workers
and peasants have finally defeated international
capitalism and are assembled to re-organize the
world on a Socialist basis that a proposal for gen-
eral disarmament will be adopted and carried into
effect. This event, being irresistibly prepared by
the deepening capitalist crisis and the growing
mobilization of the world's toilers under the leader-
ship of the Communist International, will take
place sooner than the world bourgeoisie dare think
and it will be one of the very greatest steps forward
ever taken by the human race.

Socialist Incentive

ONE OF the classical capitalist arguments against
Socialism is that it would destroy incentive; that
is, if private property in industry and the right
to exploit the workers were abolished the urge for
social progress, and even for day-to-day produc-
tion, would be killed.

But the Russian revolution has shattered this

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 329

contention irreparably. The Russian workers and
peasants are building Socialism with a mass energy
and enthusiasm quite unparalleled in history.
Manifestly, they are propelled by a great incen-
tive. This is a marvel to the bourgeois newspaper
correspondents. But it is just as Marx, three gen
erations ago, said it would be under Socialism.

The incentive of the Russian toilers is easily ex-
plained. They own the country and everything in
it. There is no exploiting class to rob them of the
fruits of their toil. They welcome better produc-
tion methods because they get the full benefit of
them. They have broken the chain of capitalist
slavery and are building a new world of liberty,
prosperity and happiness for themselves and fam-
ilies. It is equally understandable why the pro-
ducing masses in capitalist countries betray no such
enthusiasm in their work. The latter are robbed
of what they produce; for them improvements in
production mean wage-cuts and unemployment.
Incentive under capitalism is confined practically
to the exploiting classes and their hangers-on. It
is only with the advent of Socialism that the great
masses develop real incentive.

Socialist incentive in the Soviet Union explains
why the workers so militantly defended the revo-
lution against the many capitalist armies in 1918-
20, and why they have endured famine and pesti-
lence for the revolution. In the industries it is
an intelligent mass incentive that provides the basis

330 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

for the keen Socialist competition, for shock-bri-
gades to speed production, for the self-imposed
labor discipline, for the heroic present-day self-
denial in putting the Five- Year Plan into effect so
that a solid base of heavy industry may be quickly
laid for the Socialist prosperity.

In view of all this mass interest and initiative
of the workers in Soviet industry current capitalist
charges about "forced labor" in the U.S.S.R. stand
exposed as ridiculous. Forced labor is native to
capitalism, not Socialism. The whole Socialist
system is utterly antagonistic to any enslavement
of the workers. Even bourgeois writers and poli-
ticians are beginning to admit this. H. R. Mussey
says: "If anybody wants a bargain in forced la-
bor, or any other kind of labor, I should advise
him not to look for it in Russia just now, as far as
I have seen it; for it is a seller's market in labor
if ever there was one." xl Rep. H. T. Rainey,
Democratic House leader, declares: "Labor is
freer in Russia than in any other country in the
world." 12

The differentiated wage scales, including piece-
work, in the Soviet Union constitute no contradic-
tion to the prevalent strong mass incentive.
Temporarily, they must serve to stimulate the less
conscious elements to acquire skill and to produce.
The wage system as a whole is a hang-over from

11 The Nation, Nov. 4, 1931.

12 New York World-Telegram, Apr. 8, 1932.

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 331

capitalism, part of the baggage that has to be dis-
carded during the transition from capitalism to
Communism. Improved production methods and
general education will solve that problem. Re-
cently Stalin said, in polemizing against tendencies
to at once equalize wages:

"Marx and Lenin said that the differences between
skilled and unskilled work would continue to exist even
under Socialism and even after the classes had been anni-
hilated, that only under Communism would this difference
disappear, that therefore, even under Socialism Vages*
must be paid according to the labor performed and not
according to need." 13

Besides the revolutionary enthusiasm and initia-
tive of the masses and many other indications al-
ready present of the eventual wageless system there
is the "Party maximum." That is, the members
of the Communist party have a set wage limit above
which they cannot go. Thus Stalin gets the same
wages, as many hundreds of thousands of other
workers and much less than large numbers of non-
Party mechanics and engineers. "Russia," says
Stuart Chase, "has achieved more progress and de-
veloped more initiative on $150 a month, the of-
ficial Party salary, than any other nation has ever
dreamed of in an equal period." 14

It is exactly in the incentive of the workers and
poor farmers that the proletarian revolution has

is Speech delivered on June 23, 1931.

i* The Philadelphia Record, Nov. 22, 1931.

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

its great motive force. This is what gains it the
support of the masses, what carries it through a
thousand trials and tribulations, what is driving
through the Five- Year Plan successfully and what
will eventually build a world system of Commu-
nism. Mussey, in the above-quoted article from
The Nation, issues the following warning to the
capitalist class :

"If the rulers of the western world would retain their
leadership, even in part, then I am persuaded that they
and their apologists would do well without further delay
to recognize the profound significance of that combina-
tion of motives on the basis of which the Russians have
accomplished the impossibilities of the past 14 years and
to cease their parrot-like iteration of the impossibility
of successful appeal in industry to anything except in-
dividual cupidity. The Russian construction marvels of
1931 — and they are marvels — are not built on indi-
vidual cupidity."

Collectivism and Individualism

DEFENDERS of capitalism declare that Socialism
destroys individualism. But when they speak of
individualism they have in mind the right of freely
exploiting the workers. They mean that the anti-
social individualism of capitalism will go. Under
Socialism no one will have the right to exploit
another; no longer will a profit-hungry employer
be able to shut his factory gates and sentence thou-
sands to starvation; no more will it be possible for

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 333

a little clique of capitalists and their political hench-
men to plunge the world into a blood-bath of war.

Yes, such deadly individualism is doomed. But
the revolution will create in its stead a new and
better development of the individual. The collec-
tivist society of Socialism, by freeing the masses
from economic and political slavery will, for the
first time in history, give the masses an opportunity
to fully develop and express their personalities.
Theirs will be an individuality growing out of and
harmonizing with the interests of all. It will not
have the objective of one's getting rich by robbing
the toilers, but will develop itself in the direction
of achievement in science, industrial technique, art,
sports, etc. A typical example of this new motive
was the case of Lensky, a worker in the "Pneu-
matics" factory of Leningrad who recently in-
vented a very valuable electric-pneumatic meter:
given 120,000 rubles as a reward, he immediately
presented the money to various cultural organiza-
tions.

The boast of capitalist apologists about the equal
opportunity which their society affords, that it is
a case of the survival of the fittest, is a tissue of
lies. What equality is there between a Vander-
bilt and a poor miner? And as for the fittest sur-
viving, under capitalism, this means those strongest
financially. Harry K. Thaw is a glowing example
of capitalist survival of the fittest. Only Social-
ism can provide equality of opportunity, which

334 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

means a genuine occasion for the masses to enjoy
life and to develop their latent personalities.

Socialism, it is also argued, kills the spirit of
competition in society. That is more nonsense.
Under Socialism men and women strive for supe-
riority in achievement just as naturally as boys do
in a foot race. But not on the basis of privately-
owned, competitive industry. Indeed, Socialism
will introduce the first real competition since the
days of primitive Communism. Lenin, in an ar-
ticle written in 1918, says:

"Socialism does not only not extinguish competition
but on the contrary for the first time creates possibilities
to apply competition widely, on a real mass scale, to draw
the majority of the workers into the field of this work,
where they can really show themselves, where they can
develop their abilities, disclose their talents which are an
untouched source among the masses and which capitalism
trampled upon, crushed and strangled by thousands and
millions."

Stalin thus describes the basically different capi-
talist and Socialist competition:

"The principle of capitalist competition is defeat and
death for some and victory for others. The principle of
Socialist competition is, comradely assistance to those
lagging behind the more advanced, with the purpose to
reach general advancement."

The history of the Russian revolution to date en-
tirely bears out these statements of Lenin and Sta-
lin. Socialist competition is one of the main

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 335

driving forces of the revolutionary development.
In view of the basic tasks now confronting the
Soviet Union, it is inevitable that the most striking
manifestation of the new Socialist competition
should relate to the buildng and operation of the
industries. This, which we have described in
Chapter II, is a gigantic factor in carrying through
the Five- Year Plan. But Socialist competition
runs into every other field of endeavor as well, and
it will play an increasing role as the new Socialist
system gets a more solid foundation.

The existence of a strong mass incentive and a
lively spirit of competition under Socialism effec-
tually disposes of the time-worn "dead level of
Socialism" theory. Not Socialism, but capitalism,
with its exploitation, terrorism, war, superstition,
and cultivated illiteracy, creates a dead level in its
poverty and ignorance for the uncounted millions
of toilers of field and factory. It is precisely
Socialism that will destroy this dead level.

But the capitalists, as is their wont, seek to jus-
tify their destructive type of competition by assert-
ing that it is rooted firmly in human nature. Such
appeals to "human nature," however, must be taken
cautiously. By that method of reasoning it would
be quite easy to conclude that the rich capitalist
who heartlessly casts workers out of his shops pen-
niless and gives no thought as to their future has
quite a different "human nature" than the African
Negro hunter who, with his high sense of clan soli-

336 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

darity, before eating his kill, calls loudly in the
four directions in case perchance there may be
another hungry hunter nearby. Changed social
conditions develop different "human natures."
Thus competition, a ruinous, anti-social thing un-
der capitalism, becomes, under Socialism, highly
beneficent.

In recent years the argument against the ap-
proaching "dead level" of Socialism has taken on
a new development. Now machinery itself is be-
ing roundly denounced as a "dead leveller." Wide
fear is expressed that we are going into a regime
of such standardization and mechanization that life
is becoming merely a machine-like process and the
people so many robots.

This fear is essentially a class fear. The petty
bourgeoisie, including their writers and poets,
dread the machine because it wipes out their class
base, small industry; because it brings the further
subjugation of their class to the bankers and big
industrialists. Many capitalist economists, like
Foster and Catchings, Tugwell, Chase,15 etc., also
fear the machine and modern methods of mass pro-
duction, because they sense their revolutionary con-
sequences. They see the growing volume of
production, the shrinking markets, the increasing

15 Chase, although stating that, on the whole, the effect of the
machine has been progressive, is manifestly alarmed. In Men and
Machines, p. 348, his fear and confusion are expressed by his
empty program of meeting the problem of the machine without a
plan, "with nothing to guide us but our naked intelligence and a
will to conquer."

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 337

unemployment, the radicalization of the producing
masses, the growing revolutionary struggle, and
they tremble at the prospect. In Montreal, ac-
cording to a United Press dispatch of Feb. 23,
1932, the Canadian government buried a toy steam-
shovel ceremoniously, declaring that its "future
policy will be to engage manual laborers and to
scrap machinery wherever advisable."

Anti-machine propaganda like that of Gandhi,
Spengler, etc., is the absurdity of capitalism in
despair and decline. None such will be found in
the Soviet Union. The Soviet workers do not fear
the machine. They see in it an emancipator from
the drudgery and poverty of the past. They have
no dread of ensuing industrial crises and unem-
ployment. They will control the machine; not let
it enslave them as it has done under capitalism.
Nor do they fear that it will create a "dead level,"
standardized, uninteresting world. Such con-
ditions can only develop under capitalism where
everything is made for profit's sake. Capitalism
naturally develops a hopeless babbittry in every
direction; but Socialism produces inevitably the
intelligent and the beautiful.

Under Socialism the machine will be used on the
broadest scale possible to produce the necessities
of life in the great industries, transport systems and
communication services. It would be the sheer-
est nonsense and quite impossible not to take ad-
vantage of every labor and time-saving device.

338 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

But Socialist society will also know how to develop
the variegated and artistic. Where the creative
impulses of the masses are not checked by poverty
and slavery, where the arts and sciences are not
hamstrung by the profit-making motive, where the
masses are not poisoned by anti-social codes of
morals and ethics, and where every assistance of
the free community is given to the maximum cul-
tivation of the intellectual and artistic powers of
the masses — there we need have no fear that so-
ciety will be robotized by the machine.

Life under a Communist society will be varied
and interesting. Individual will vie with individ-
ual, as never before, to create the useful and the
beautiful. Locality will compete with locality in
the beauty of their architecture. The impress of
individuality and originality will be upon every-
thing. The world will become a place well worth
living in, and what is the most important, its joys
will not be the niggardly monopoly of a privileged
ruling class but the heritage of the great producing
masses.

Building a New World

THE PROLETARIAN revolution is the most profound
of all revolutions in history. It initiates changes
more rapid and far-reaching than any in the whole
experience of mankind. The hundreds of millions
of workers and peasants, striking off their age-old
chains of slavery, will construct a society of liberty

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 339

and prosperity and intelligence. Communism will
inaugurate a new era for the human race, the build-
ing of a new world.

The overthrow of capitalism and the develop-
ment of Communism will bring about the immedi-
ate or eventual solution of many great social
problems. Some of these originate in capitalism,
and others have plagued the human race for scores
of centuries. Among them are war, religious
superstition, prostitution, famine, pestilence, crime,
poverty, alcoholism, unemployment, illiteracy, race
and national chauvinism, the suppression of
woman, and every form of slavery and exploita-
tion of one class by another. Already in the Soviet
Union, with the revolution still in its initial stages,
the forces are distinctly to be seen at work that
will eventually liquidate these handicaps to the
happiness and progress of the human race. But,
of course, only a system of developed world Com-
munism can fully uproot and destroy all these
evils.

The objective conditions, in the shape of scien-
tific knowledge and the means of creating material
wealth, are already at hand in sufficient measure
to do away with these menaces to humanity. But
the trouble lies with the subjective factor, the capi-
talist order of society. Capitalism, based upon
human exploitation, stands as the great barrier to
social progress. Communism, by abolishing the
capitalist system, liquidates this subjective diffi-

340 TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

culty. It releases thereby productive forces
strong enough to provide plenty for all and it de-
stroys the whole accompanying capitalist baggage
of cultivated ignorance, strife and misery. Com-
munism frees humanity from the stultifying effects
of the present essentially animal struggle for ex-
istence and opens up before it new horizons of
joys and tasks. The day is not so far distant when
our children, immersed in this new life, will look
back with horror upon capitalism and marvel how
we tolerated it so long.

Communist society, in its battle onward and up-
ward, will attack and carry through many pro-
found measures besides those mentioned. Among
these will be the organization of the economics of
the world upon a rational and planned basis, the
systematic conservation and increase of the world's
natural resources, the development of a vast con-
centration upon all the great problems now con-
fronting science, the beautification of the world by
a new and richer artistry, the liquidation of con-
gested cities and the combination of the joys and
conveniences of country and urban life, and the
solution of many other great problems and tasks
now hardly even imagined.

Communist society, however, will not confine it-
self simply to thus developing the objective condi-
tions for a better life. Especially will it turn its
attention to the subjective factor, to the funda-
mental improvement of man himself. Capitalism,

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 341

with its wars, wage slavery, slums, crooked doctors,
etc., undermines the health of the race and destroys
its physique. Communism, with its healthful
dwellings and working conditions, its pure food,
physical culture, etc., will make good health, like
thorough education, the property of all. Already
this is becoming so in the Soviet Union. But this
will be only a beginning. Communist society will
go farther. It will scientifically regulate the
growth of population. It will especially speed up
the very evolution of man himself, his brain and
body. Capitalism has checked the evolution of
the human species, if it has not actually brought
about a process of race degeneration. But Com-
munism will systematically breed up mankind.
Already the scientific knowledge is at hand to do
this, but it is at present inapplicable because of
the idiocy of the capitalist system, its planlessness,
its antiquated moral codes, its warp and woof of
exploitation.

For many generations the long list of Utopians,
the Platos, Mores, Fouriers, Owens, and Bellamys,
have dreamed and planned ideal states of society.
Their strong point was that they sensed mankind's
capacity for a higher social life than the existing
wild scramble. But their weak point, and this was
decisive, was that they did not know what was the
matter with society nor how to cure it. They had
not the slightest conception of either the objective
or subjective conditions necessary for social revo-

TOWARD SOVIET AMERICA

lution. Their Utopias, mere speculations discon-
nected from actual life, fell upon deaf ears.

It has remained for the modern proletariat, un-
der the brilliant leadership of Marx and Lenin, to
find the revolutionary way to the higher social
order, on the basis of the industrial and social con-
ditions set up by capitalism. Marxians have been
able to analyze capitalism scientifically, to work
out a correct program and strategy of struggle, to
establish effective organization among the workers
and peasants, to master generally the laws of so-
cial development. Consequently, with the objec-
tive situation becoming ever more ripe, the
revolution no longer appears as an abstraction, a
mere theory. Today, Socialism is a great living
world reality. As Polakov says, "The Russian
'experiment* is an experiment no more." In the
Soviet Union the first great breach has been made
in the walls of capitalism. The rest will follow
apace. And we may be sure that the revolution,
in its upward course, will carry humanity to heights
of happiness and achievement far beyond the
dreams of even the most hopeful Utopians.

American imperialism is now strong. Its cham-
pions ridicule the idea of a revolution. But their
assurance is not now quite so sure as it was a couple
of years ago, before the great industrial collapse.
They are beginning to feel a deadly fear. The
Russian revolution is to them such a terrible reality.
But they console themselves with the thought that

UNITED SOVIET STATES OF AMERICA 343

"it can never happen in this country," and they
scorn the at-present weak Communist party. But
they overlook the detail that the same attitude was
taken towards the pre-re volution Bolsheviki.
Especially did the Socialist Moguls of the Second
International look upon them as narrow sectarians
and upon Lenin as a fanatical dreamer. But one
thing is certain, American capitalism is part and
parcel of the world capitalist system and is subject
to all its basic weaknesses and contradictions; it
travels the same way to its destruction as capitalism
in general.

The world capitalist system is in decay. All
the king's horses and all the king's men cannot- save
it. Its general crisis deepens; the masses develop
revolutionary consciousness ; the international revo-
lutionary storm forces gather. Capitalism, it is
true, makes a strong and stubborn resistance.
The advance of the revolution is difficult, its pace
is slow, and it varies from country to country, but
its direction is sure and its movement irresistible.
Under the leadership of the Communist Inter-
national the toilers of the world are organizing to
put a final end to the long, long ages of ignorance
and slavery, of which capitalist imperialism is the
last stage, and to begin building a prosperous and
intelligent society commensurate with the levels to
which social knowledge and production possibilities
have reached.

THE END